Apple signs license agreement with Acacia

lol.......

Oh snap!

BTW can we get rid of some of the trolls here? Lazycash would be a nice start.

inconceivable!

wow......

Oh my god!

The snakes are getting fed again

I wonder how they are selling this to companies based on your stock quotes posted.

"Hey, the bump you'll get in stock price is less than what you're going to pay us - it is WIN-WIN!"

It feels like there should be a law about this company's business model. I bet ya sometime in the future there will be if. If not, they'll be ordered to stop atleast.

Ah, nm. They are working on it!

Supreme Court Attacks Patent Licensing Companies
Wednesday May 2, 4:27 pm ET


Microcap Speculator submits: I believe that two recent Supreme Court decisions have made the patent licensing business model considerably more risky. As a result, all of the following companies are less attractive investments:
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ARM Holdings (NasdaqGS: ARMHY)
Rambus (NasdaqGS: RMBS)
Acacia Technology (NasdaqGM: ACTG)
Burst.com
Forgent Networks (NasdaqGM: FORG)
Neomagic Corp. (NasdaqGM: NMGC)
Patriot Scientific
Star Scientific (NasdaqGM: STSI)
...and many others

Last year, in MercExchange v. Ebay (NasdaqGS: EBAY), the Supreme Court vacated a long-standing presumption that courts should issue permanent injunctions to stop patent infringement. The High Court ruled that a fair royalty could suffice, especially where the plaintiff is not currently practicing the invention. In a concurring opinion, Justice Kennedy (joined by Justices Stevens, Souter, and Breyer) took direct aim at patent licensing companies:

In cases now arising trial courts should bear in mind that in many instances the nature of the patent being enforced and the economic function of the patent holder present considerations quite unlike earlier cases. An industry has developed in which firms use patents not as a basis for producing and selling goods but, instead, primarily for obtaining licensing fees. ... For these firms, an injunction, and the potentially serious sanctions arising from its violation, can be employed as a bargaining tool to charge exorbitant fees to companies that seek to buy licenses to practice the patent. ... When the patented invention is but a small component of the product the companies seek to produce and the threat of an injunction is employed simply for undue leverage in negotiations, legal damages may well be sufficient to compensate for the infringement and an injunction may not serve the public interest.

Tuesday's decision, KSR v. Teleflex (NYSE: TFX - News), may be even more significant. In that decision, the Supreme Court made it significantly easier for patents to be attacked on the ground that they were "obvious" in light of prior art. In SCOTUSblog, Michael Barclay of Silicon Valley law firm Wilson Sonsini explained:

This decision makes it far easier to invalidate patents based on obviousness. Thus, this is the most important patent case of the last 20 years, and perhaps since the passage of the 1952 Patent Act. Virtually every litigated patent case includes an assertion of obviousness – and ones that might not have included that defense up until now are more likely to do so. The PTO examines every patent application for obviousness. [The case] will thus have an enormous impact on both the prosecution and litigation aspects of patent practice.

All I can say is... wow...

How can they have the patent on gui? Xerox invented it and apple and microsoft stole it.

For some reason I thought that was another IBM first. Could be wrong on that. Im old, and get mixed up easily.

hahahaahah
gold

Steve Jobs can't be this stupid can he?

It is beyond ridiculous that this group of scumbag lawyers is using the patent office to shake down ligitimate businesses. Fuck berman and his bitch posse.

animated gui?

Now there's a name I hadn't heard about in awhile..

Seems he is...

Nah it was Xerox and actually Xerox labs invented most of the shit we use for the internet. The problem was that the old men in charge of Xerox saw no use or possibility in anything the lab created.
That is why Xerox labs had no problem showing stuff off to Steve Jobbs who then stole the ideas and started up with Apple, which he sort of showed to Bill Gates to do some programing and Bill also saw the potential and stole it from Steve. Which really should end the Bill stole it arguement, nobody had clean hands aside from Xerox labs and their bosses who like IBM saw no potential in certain technology.

America the land of opportunity!

I heard similar stories like that in the past before about Xerox.... interesting to hear someone back it up. THank you .

Patent licensing is a gorgeous business model.

Innovation is the economic engine inside our economy.

Claims of "obviousness" can be negated by showing industry awards and recognition.

Is that for the Video BS or some other patent they bought?

Pretty common history, at least some of the labs people patented stuff like Ethernet etc. So some of them are pretty set.

Something else. (GUI)

Just watch the movie "The Pirates Of Silicon Valley". It explains everything.

omg

a great book on the subject a real fun read.
http://www.amazon.com/Accidental-Emp...1933791&sr=8-1
It shows you the real days of milk and honey we missed. lol

The key aspect is the use of tabs in the gui. Here's the original 20 year old patent from Xerox. Acacia acquired the patent rights somewhere along the line.

thats fucking crazy,I hope the change the law.

I would reccomend Triumph of the nerds and Hackers - Wizards of the Electronic Age.

This blows. Big time.

You got that right ....

Xerox never realised the value of it ....

"If it is so damn "obvious," why wasn't everybody doing it before my patent disclosure?"

Days of Milk & honey? Judging by the valuations of Google, YouTube, Facebook, AQuantive, Double Click and Myspace I would say we are currently in the days of milk and honey.

Read the book it was different,its a great read.

Define Irony

The movie is lacking many things, and trivialized in others. But it covers the basic premise.

Microsoft did hire one of the former creator of the gui from parc which is the main reason they won their lawsuit against apple. They were able to make the argument of parallel development path even though other employees at Microsoft saw the apple gui.

ruh roh....

just thought I would bump this

nice one