Acacia Question

The first payment is supposed to be for your PRIOR patent violations.

In other words, you'd still be fucked, show your videos.

considering they dont even know half the people's domains they sent letters to, i wonder how exactly they will prove this "prior infrigement"

How can you infringe on their patents if you didn't know their patents existed until they told you? Don't you have to 'knowingly' infringe on a patent to violate it? If they send me a registered letter and I stop infringing on their (soon-to-be-reversed) patents, how can they sue me? And what would be the point?

Boobmaster

THEY WILL LOSE....

They can still target you for past infringement...especially if you are on their radar screen.

If you received an "information packet" or a "final notice" letter, you are on their radar screens.

I think they are going to start on their efforts to filing lawsuits after Nov. 30th. Got an interesting story running in the thread titled: Has Acacia called you at home or at work? (http://www.gofuckyourself.com/showth...hreadid=194655)

If you are considering on settling, i point you to this thread titled: For those thinking about settling w/Acacia (http://www.gofuckyourself.com/showth...hreadid=194845)


If Acacia has not targeted a webmaster with any contact, then you could probably take down your video stuff and ride the storm out. If you have been contacted, chances are, they will try to go to the next step.


Fight the Contact!

Exactly... but, if they have sent you some kind of letter, the natural next step is to go with the lawsuit....let litigation determine if you are truly infringing....

They really don't know what websites go with the names of the people they sent the letters to....what websites they do have, are most likely old ones that came from some database.

Fight the Infringement!

What thing that sucks about Patent Law is that you could be infringing upon a legitimate patent claim and never know it until they hit you up with infringement claims.

Patent Law also allows them to get retro license fees to the first day you started using someone else's patent. They could also just tell you to shut your business down and not offer you a patent.

The FTC just recently proposed that prior infringement should not count unless you have first been put on notice. This is a great step in helping patent reform, but it's still a long way off.

So you don't have to know about a patent to be infringing.

If you were 'knowingly infringing' then they could get treble damages.

It will take a patent attorney and about $10K to pay for an opinion paper in order to prove that you are not knowingly infringing... it gets complicated.


The point of them suing people is to get licenses.... the figure it's cheaper for you to settle, than have the money to defend yourself in court.... while we may believe the patent claims to be bogus, only a court of law will decide the validity of the patent... until then, defendants like Home Grown Video and the 10 other companies are just waiting for their day in court.

It's a very expensive fight they are putting on, one that once they are able to knock down this patent, they don't get their money back for money spent on attorney fees!

So these 11 defendants are the true heroes, and are fighting for ALL webmaster's rights to have audio/video.

For more info about Acacia, check out http://www.FightThePatent.com/go I have a regularly updated Acacia FAQ along with info about the proposed Fight the Patent Foundation.


Fight the Anti-Heroes!

I'd like to see them start sueing scads of small sponsors that don't have the cash to pay them in lumps or at all. lol

Wonder who their genius advisor was when they started all of this?

The Wayback Machine

Don't waste your time with Acacia..

Fight this patent .. don't follow them.. throw their letters in the garbage.