Oh my god. WTF has the US Patent Office done to itself?
They must have been asleep at the wheel, and granted them this patent. They must have gotten starry eyed with all the wizardry of a web browser back in 2000, that they thought, this was a new and compelling technology.
The description of this patent, is just for a web site application, that will distribute assignments to students. The idea behind it is really not any more different than the GUI programs that were written on Windows 95 like the AOL program. They just splashed some fancy new words like "Uniform Resource Locator" and "World Wide Web".
This is another valid reason why software patents should be abolished. This is pure insanity. This is government and bureaucratic corruption of the highest order.
I think the patent office has absolved itself from all responsibility and shifted it to the courts. This mostly hurts small businesses that want to avoid court as much as possible.
A patent for a black chalkboard?