Quote:
Originally posted by juicylinks
Based on that ruling would ACACIA lose any rights from sending out naymore packets and suing anyone else?
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A very interesting question, which also brings up a related question, "If you have a licensing agreement with Acacia and the patent is found invalid, does the contract become invalid when the patent is invalidated?"
If the patent is found to be invalidated, then yes, no more packets can go out... BUT, if they are stuck in court for months and years, they could STILL be sending out packets...
A patent dispute case could take many months, up to years... so while the court cases are going on, Acacia could still be "convincing" webmasters to license.
You also DON'T get your money back if the patent is found invalid.
Berman was almost bragging at this fact on the D$ interview when someone asked about V-Chip case being lost, and he said something to the affect that they already collected $27M in licenses, and didn't consider that to be a loss (if anyone has a transcript or an archived file, it would be great to have).
What would be nice is if the judge puts a hold/freeze on any more lawsuits that Acacia can file until the outcome of the current 11 defendants. If that were to happen, then everyone could breathe a sigh of relief and everyone can be focused on supporting the 11 defendants.
I am not sure if the judge can do that, i am not a lawyer, and i have never seen any instance of this on any TV show.
If the judge allows more suits to be filed while the cases are going on, then this would be bad news for webmasters who have to decide to settle for a license, while cases are pending.
As far as the question i posed, i haven't followed up with the v-chip case after the verdict with Sony...about the companies that did license the V-chip patent, and their responses, etc.
Fight the Patent!