Acacia Question....

As I understand it , they acquired patents from companies either by buying the patent rights or the companies themselves. Although the individual patents weren't worth much on their own, the whole collection supposedly allows them to claim ownership over the Intellectual Property involved in streaming technologies.

FWIW I think that it is exactly this kind of thing that is against the common interest and quite frankly patents should be non transferrable.

Ahh... definately an interesting twist.

Man I wish I could find some articles that cover this tho

my tech was scouring articles and patents today... said they don't even mention the word internet/web et cetera in any of their writing ...

being vague ... might open them up

http://www.forbes.com/home/2003/04/0..._0402porn.html

A bunch of lawyers who probably had signed up and felt burned by shitty porn sites and recurring billing on their credit cards got together and said lets fuck these porn guys over real good.

Better than a chargeback at least!

No a bunch of lawyers who make a living out of royalties on Patents or suing people.

This is an industry in the US and a very dispicable one at that but it's completely legal.

The patent office being a goverment body is full of lowly paid people with not enough knowledge on what they are allowing patents for. So they are granting them when they should be throwing them out. This is the real cause of the problem.

Acacia have the patents, they are legal and can be enforced. What is needed to bring them down is a court order.

Hopefully next week Spike at HomeGrown will have a site up explaining everything.

try this one... http://www.webmastervault.com/tip-acacia-1.shtml

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-P...S=PN/6,368,227

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-P...S=PN/5,443,036

i dont know if anyone feels the same way, but if microsoft and aol jump on their side, i think we all are done.

as of right now, i think they are just watching and waiting on what happens with this industry to see how to tackle this situation. why they would wait is beyond me since, from what i gather, we are all using the same platform (more or less) to stream video. what really gets me though is why would they go after an individual webmaster and not those who create the software we use to stream videos (ie, qt, ms, java...etc)?

Because it is so much easier to go after the companies who actually have the content and use it for profit. They not only can fund their further efforts thru these actions, they set, or attempt to set, precedents which can aid in their final cases with the validity of the patents.

Just think back to when Gore was running for President, when he said he developed the internet. Soon he will demand a percentage of all profits made on his invention - LMAO!

Flow

Their patents are broad, but their justification for going after internet is that the videos are transmitted over phone lines, cable and/or satelite.

What i'm wondering though is the nature of server technology. If you look at the flow of data from server to end user, it's all cat5 cables and fiber until it gets to the isp that the end user is connected to. At that point the ISP transmits the video to the end user dependent upon what kind of agreement and service plan the subscriber has with the isp. Accordingly the video streaming source has really 0% control over what physical line type the end user receives the video through.

While i know that spike and jmm et al are using a wise strategy, which is a) dispute the validity of the patent first.. and if they lose that then b) they will likely enjoin a lot of big companies (especially the reals/microsofts/apples of the world).... but what i would vote for and i cant see being technologically or legally unsound is to enjoin every single isp in the united states as well because they are profiting directly off of the violation of the patent (if it's valid) but more importantly, they are actually the ones making the important choice to transmit in a way that specifically violates it.

JMHO... probably useless now.. but if things go badly with prior art and the patents are declared valid, then it might worth a thought.

Although (just stream of consciousness typing here) it might be useful in invaliding the patents because the video streamer per se has no control over whether the patent is violated. For example, T1 users and Fiber and microwave subscribers dont appear to fall into the patent as it's written. And a video producer has no way of telling which is which.. and the actualiy transmission to the isp is done in a method that does not violate the patents... and since the video producer/streamer does not control the entire system and acacia can only hold them liable for what they *do* control (not to mention that acacia's patents describe the *entire* system from encoding and transmission to decoding and reception... no?

Perhaps to clarify. I create a patent that covers playing the note Aminor and distributing it via the radio frequencies 90.5-91.5. Somehow i get the patent office to allow it. And now i want to sue.

Do i sue the artist who used A minor? Do i sue the nationally syndicated satelite fed radio station? Or do i sue KXAB 91.2? To me it seems that it is obviously the latter. Why? Because KXAB is the one who has the ability to prevent infringement on my patent.

So now back to acacia... do isp's have the ability to prevent the streaming of audio and video via cable, telephone or satelite? YOU BETCHA.. the ISP's themselves know exactly what kind of connection the end user has.. AND they have the ability to filter content, ports, packets etc at a router level before THEY deliver it to the end user.

Done ranting.