Blackboard, makers of a badly designed but incredibly popular Learning Management System (LMS) in use at about eighty percent of colleges in the USA, got a big smackdown on a slew of bogus patents they had been using to fend off competitors and stifle competition. This is a “non-final” decision, which means both parties have time to comment and Blackboard has the right to appeal. But it doesn’t look good for them, and that’s a good thing for educators and their IT departments. They have rival LMS-maker Desire2Learn and the Software Freedom Law Center to thank for funding the case.