Has a company patented e-learning?

Even the promise of academic technology isn't immune to the ugliness of patent disputes.

Just as online education is seeing something of a renaissance thanks to , a global software corporation has won a license that many say essentially gives it ownership to the basic concept of e-learning. And once it won the patent, Washington-based Blackboard wasted no time: On the day it was awarded, the company reportedly sued Desire2Learn, a rival in Ontario.

What troubles critics most is the broad nature of Blackboard's patent, which apparently goes far beyond any particular technology to cover fundamental aspects of large-scale, widely used "Learning Management Systems."

As Eduventures senior analyst Catherine Burdt told the Associated Press: "A few years ago this was a place to just hang your syllabus, maybe post a couple of links. Increasingly, we see these systems as the foundation of academic computing."

Leave it to government bureaucrats to thwart the exciting that has reinvigorated the often-stagnant education establishment.