Blackboard, a company offering online tools for learning has been granted a patent entitled 'Internet-based education support system and methods'. The patent relates to a system and methods for implementing education online by providing institutions with the means for allowing the students to access courses  online, the courses including assignments, announcements, course materials, chat and whiteboard facilities, and the like, all of which are available to the students over a network such as the internet.  There is fear among the academic institutions and online learning tools companies that the patent covers some basic aspects of online learning which might block usage and development of such tools. They argue that the concepts covered in the patent were in existence for more than fifty years and that the patent would have a bad impact on the pace at which online learning is developing. Desire2Learn, a company providing innovative e-Learning solutions to academic and other organizations around the world plans to petition and fight against the validity of the patent.

Toshiba settled all litigation with Lexor, which was recently acquired by Micron by paying 288 million dollars and by taking a license over all patents relating to NAND flash technology. NAND flash memory is widely used in digital cameras, MP3 players, flash drives and so on. The settlement puts an end to all disputes between the companies with regard to trade secret misappropriation and patent infringement. Last year, a court in California had awarded  Lexor 465 million dollars as damages and disputes were pending in other courts. The take over of Lexor by Micron changed the perspective between the parties and paved the way for amicable settlement of the litigation.

 

Multi national Bio tech giant, Syngenta recently launched a new variety of Busy Lizzie or Touch-Me-Not, an ornamental flowering plant very popular with the British.  The Spellbound Busy Lizzie, as the variant is called, was infused with a new biological strain to help the plant trail in any direction, thereby making it easier to grow as compared to the previous unfashionably ‘upright’ version. As expected, the demand for the LizzieSpellbound Busy Lizzie is very high in the European and North American markets. Syngenta used a rare Tanzanian plant, Usambarensis, which it had obtained from the Royal Botanical Gardens at Edinburgh as far back as in 1982, to crossbreed with the normal Busy Lizzie to create the hybrid trailing version and obtained a British patent. While Syngenta claimed this was an invention on its part, environmental groups assert that such cross breeding happens naturally and Syngenta could not claim to have invented the variant. Further, any profits that Syngenta makes from commercial sale of the variant have to be shared with that Tanzanian community from where Usambarensis was sourced.