This is a little late, but better late than never.

Apparently a US e-learning company called Blackboard has recently been awarded a patent for e-learning by offices in the US, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. The patent is pending in other countries. Read the company's press release.

The not-so-good news, according to this blog which has a whole category devoted to the topic, is that the patent "covers core technology relating to certain systems and methods involved in offering online education, including course management systems and enterprise e-Learning systems."

That's quite a bit of intellectual property to protect, and Blackboard has started by suing a small Canadian e-learning competitor.

Tim O'Reilly notes that there are many instances of prior art. The open source community is up in arms. Things are getting exciting. Watch this space...