AVN released late yesterday this article about the Friday meeting between the defendant's attorneys, Acacia, and the new judge.
http://www.avn.com/index.php?Primary...ntent_ID=48561
The 4th paragraph is of interest, where the article reports that the judge is favoring a Markman Hearing.
"Markman Hearing" is explained in this article:
http://www.howrey.com/practices/ip/i...?contentID=288
The significance of this event, if it happens, is that Acacia does not get discovery information from the defendants...they have to appear in court and present their claims, and the defendants present their defense claims. The judge weighs the arguments and determines if there real validity in the plantiff claims.)
One of the paragraph's address this:
"Because claim construction should be done without looking at the systems or methods that are accused of infringement, it is unlikely that Acacia will be able to find out how the Defendants' systems work and then tweak its claim construction arguments to make its infringement case," the message continued. "This is a huge victory because the documents that Acacia has given the Defendants thus far make clear that Acacia does not know how Defendants' systems work, and that it lacked a good faith basis for filing these suits in the first place. "
It's not like a trial, but is like one, in that you have to present evidence to support your claims (from my understand of Markman Hearings).
This could mean that the judge could be convinced with the prior art presentation by the defense to see that the Acacia patent claims are not valid and don't apply.
Given this potential direction, I have taken down the prior art page and the searching for prior art page to protect the defendants case.
Prior to this news, it was decided that the presentation of sample prior art and a list of prior to search for, was more of a benefit to the defendants case because it would allow more people to be involved in the searching and to also see that prior art is out there.
During discovery phase of litigation, Acacia would be handed over all the prior art that the defendants found, so it was not an issue if Acacia had read about some prior art on my pages.
But with a Markman Hearing and not having a discovery phase, this means Acacia could get some insight into what prior art the defendants might use and try to prepare their attack based on it.
For those that have joined me on the search for prior art, please send the leads to me, and don't post on boards.
There is a real reason now not to publically post the information.
I am making the private webpages available to defense attorneys and other interested parties.
The Adult Industry is not alone in Acacia's targetting.. mainstream IS AWARE and are getting their defenses in place.
Fight the Discovery!