Verizon is suing Vonage for patent infringement, leading to an injunction against Vonage signing up new customers. Although the injunction was lifted, it's clear that Verizon is using patents to broadly protect its business.

Amazon has patented the software design that power it's "Mechanical Turk" service, which automates human input into data-processing systems.

The US Patent and Trademark Office will review the patent granted for the Blackboard course management system.

Isn't this obvious?

What does this mean for Moodle or Blackboard's commercial competitors?

I'm no fan of Blockbuster, but I like business model and software patents even less.