Blackboard To Buy Angel Learning

Blackboard Inc. announced today that it plans to buy Angel Learning, a rival course-management software company.

In 2002, Blackboard acquired a competing CMS, Prometheus, from George Washington University, and in 2005, they bought their main competitor, WebCT.

Blackboard will pay a reported $80-million in cash and $15-million in stock for Angel Learning. Both companies have approved the deal, and Blackboard expects the arrangement to become final by the end of May.

The Angel CMS was first developed at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis which started a company called CyberLearning Labs (later Angel Learning) to market it as a product to other institutions. The university is still the largest company shareholder.

The acquisition leaves Desire2Learn as Blackboard's main competitor. Last month, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued a preliminary ruling rejecting all 57 claims in a software patent that Blackboard Inc. had made to successfully sue rival Desire2Learn for infringement. That battle is still not finished and the re-examination process could drag on for years because of the many chances that Blackboard has to appeal... unless they buy out Desire2Learn too.