PaulSweet

Not sure if this has been posted yet - but if not...

Patent for Pop ups...

From MSNBC....
May 6 ? If you hate pop-up ads, you might blame Brian Shuster. A long-time figure in the Internet pornography world, Shuster recently received a patent for the ad format and is now looking to make some money off the sites that use it. And that?s just the beginning ? Shuster has a long list of pending patents, including one for pop-up audio ads that cannot be turned off.

?I APOLOGIZE FOR being a pioneer,? Shuster said, adding he?s had to apologize many times to Internet users. Two years ago, Shuster?s XPics.com settled a lawsuit with the Federal Trade Commission that stemmed from accusations that several porn Web sites he operated were deceptively charging customers.
He still runs some porn sites, but Shuster has now turned his attention to Ideaflood Inc., an intellectual property holding firm he set up to license revenue from sites that use pop-ups and, assuming his patents go through, other advertising technology.
Shuster?s pop-up patent, known officially as the ?Traffic Management Utility? patent, claims that pop-up ads account for ?20 percent of the revenue of the two most profitable Internet segments,? online casinos and ?adult entertainment.? In 2002, the patent claims, these two segments had revenues $9.25 billion.
Shuster wants a slice of that money.
He said he will demand licensing fees from sites which use pop-ups, but he hasn?t actually filed any patent cases yet. What Shuster hopes to do is attract investors intrigued by his pending patents, thus generating enough cash for Ideaflood to fund an effort to recoup licensing fees.
?Companies that I?ve built used this technology to become $100 million operations,? he said. ?It?s used ubiquitously through this segment of the Internet.?
And others, too, he claims. Online banking sites, for example, sometimes track when users leave secure transaction areas and deliver pop-up messages saying they?ll have to log back into the system. That, too, would be covered under the ?Traffic Management Utility? patent, Shuster said.

NET PATENTS HARD TO ENFORCE
Internet technology patents have so far proved difficult to enforce. In the most famous case so far, Amazon?s patent for one-click purchasing led to a two-year legal fight with Barnes & Noble. An initial court-issued injunction against Amazon was overturned, and the two companies eventually reached an out-of-court settlement.

Other high-profile patent cases are still pending, with plaintiffs both big and small. SBC Intellectual Property, a division of the telecom giant, is demanding fees from Museumtour.com over a Web navigation design patent it holds. On the other extreme, electrical engineer Thomas Woolston, founder of MercExchange, has sued eBay for infringement of online auction patents he holds. That case is currently being argued in U.S. District Court in Virginia.
There hasn?t yet been a high-profile case where a plaintiff has won big for a patent infringement, said Greg Aharonian, a patent expert who runs the Patentbust.com Web site.
Shuster does have time on his side, Aharonian said. The pop-up patent was filed in 1998, and under patent law, challengers would have to show similar technology being used prior to 1997.
?That is a bit early in Internet history,? Aharonian said. ?He?s got slightly favorable timing.?
Still, given the lack of success from other Internet infringement cases, Aharonian was skeptical that Shuster would be able to turn the patent into a money-maker. Amazon?s case against Barnes & Noble was basically a wash for both firms, he pointed out, and when British Telecom tried to enforce its patent on hyperlinking by suing Prodigy Communications Corp., a U.S. federal threw the case out.
Schuster wouldn?t comment on whether or not he has sent out any copyright infringement notices, and he said that some Internet patents have been frivolous ? but not his.
One-click shopping ?was fairly obvious,? Shuster said, as opposed to his ?more sophisticated mechanism? of doing what he calls controlling ?exit traffic? and others have likened to ?browser hijacking.?
?I don?t think there was anything resembling this business method when we filed for the patent in 1998,? Shuster said.
The patent is explicit, describing computer code that can ?interact with the browser to modify or control one or more of the browser functions, such that the user is directed to a predesignated site or page, instead of accessing the site or page typically associated with the selected browser function.?

OTHER PATENTS IN THE WORKS
Other Shuster patents include similar technology to take control of a user?s computer and send them to unexpected Web sites.
One, called ?Method, apparatus and system for directing access,? describes the use of ?hidden frames? to inject hahahahahahahahahaha onto an unsuspecting user?s computer, which can later be used to send the browser to another Web site.
Shuster defended such redirections, saying they are necessary for Internet advertising to be successful. And exit traffic, he said, can be used simply to survey visitors leaving a Web page. The technology has since been abused, he said, leading to the current state of affairs ? porn Web sites with endless loops that sometimes cannot be escaped until the accidental visitor turns off their computer.
?Yes, the use of this technology contributes to horrific pop-up loops that are of no value,? he said. ?In my opinion, pop-up loops are in contradiction to the rights we have in this patent.? He even suggested that, armed with the patent, his firm will be able to clamp down pop-up abuse.

MORE HIJACKING METHODS
In fact, in his settlement with the FTC in 2000, Shuster said he agreed to limit the use of pop-ups on his sites. But computer consultant Richard Smith, who operates ComputerBytesMan, found other redirect technologies still in use on a porn site connected to Ideaflood.
The computer of a relative of his was recently hijacked and continually sent to a porn Web site, Smith said. The software then turned the porn site into the browser?s default home page and search page. The computer?s registry was also changed so that any time a less-than-complete Internet address was typed into the browser?s address field, the surfer was redirected to the porn site.
For example, typing in ?www.hotmail.com? instead of ?http://www.hotmail.com? would deliver a pop-up porn window, and then send the browser to Hotmail, making it look, Smith said, like Hotmail was advertising porn.
While the porn site was registered to Ideaflood, Shuster said it was run by a third-party group based in Russia. His business hosts some 100,000 independent Web sites, he said, adding that he had no idea what software was redirecting Web browsers to this particular site. However, Shuster said, the software as described by Smith would violate Ideaflood?s terms of service.





The porn site was pulled down after MSNBC.com?s inquiries because ?some of the women looked like they may be underage,? Shuster said. He said he then filed a complaint about the site with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Shuster drew a sharp distinction between the software Smith encountered, which he said was ?probably illegal,? and other forms of traffic redirection he has developed. He said pop-ups regularly generate successful leads for casino and pornography sites, and consumers do click on them.
?Obviously many people do, 20 percent of the revenue generated in this major market segment is from exit traffic,? he said, echoing claims made in his patent. The figure comes from internal company research, Shuster said.

EFFECTIVE ADVERTISING
?The reason the Internet has stalled out so badly is that advertising is a non-profitable segment,? he added. The use of ?hijacked traffic? is a question of balance, Shuster said, but there has to be effective advertising so ?a provider of content can make a reasonable living.?
And so Shuster is continuing to develop new aggressive advertising techniques.
One of them would force Web surfers to hear an ad from start to finish with no way for the listener to turn the ad off. Or, as the patent application states, ?the Web site then delivers the audio advertisement to the user via the network in a format that precludes the user from controlling the manner of playback of the audio advertisement.?
In lab tests, the response rate to what might be called ?pop-up audio? has been outstanding, Shuster said, meaning such ads may soon be interrupting plenty of Web surfers, or at least those who don?t manage to turn off their speakers fast enough.
?They will be hugely effective,? Shuster said. ?I apologize in advance to everybody on the Internet who won?t be able to surf the Net in quiet anymore.?

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directfiesta

I heard somebody had gotten a patent on my dick ... I will not be allowed to use it unless I pay....

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I know that Asspimple is stoopid ... As he says, it is a FACT !

But I can't figure out how he can breathe or type , at the same time ....

MrPopup

Looks like someone learned law from the guys over at Acacia.

If you do business with this guy YOU DO NOT have the right to complain about the Acacia lawsuit.

this guy at xpics.com is fucking incredible - i cant believe it...

Why dont we all set up companies to patent things like air, water, cancer, etc.

Bulletin Boards will be patented soon along with blogs i am certain of it.


**********************

A Patent On Porn
Seth Lubove, 04.02.03, 9:00 AM ET

NEW YORK - It must have seemed like easy pickings at the time.

Acacia Research says it owns five U.S. and 17 international patents covering the transmission and receipt of digital audio and digital video content, otherwise known as streaming media. But before attempting to enforce its patents with big outfits such as Yahoo! (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people ) and The Walt Disney Co. (nyse: DIS - news - people ), Acacia instead chose to go after the smallish adult Internet sites that peddle videos of women (and men) doffing their clothes--and much more.

Beginning last year, the company sent a series of letters to 700 racy Web sites with offers to arrange royalty deals, typically consisting of 1% to 2% of gross revenue. Do the deal or we'll see you in court, warned Acacia. Eight firms agreed to Acacia's terms. But 40 didn't, and Acacia promptly slapped them with lawsuits. Rather than buckling, though, several of the porno sites joined together and stood their ground. Now Acacia is in the fight of its life and may even face a shareholder revolt as a result.

"This is a travesty to the legal system," complains E. Michael "Spike" Goldberg, chief executive officer of the company that owns HomeGrownVideo.com, a site featuring amateurs performing various sex acts in their homes and other creative locales. "They've made a business model out of a loophole," he says of the broadness of Acacia's patent claim. "It's like they're trying to patent breathing."

Goldberg didn't just get mad. He's getting even. Along with an adult streaming-media outfit called Video Secrets and several other sex sites, Goldberg somehow convinced the prestigious intellectual property law firm of Fish & Richardson to take on their case.

"We feel strongly about this case. It's not about the business or the content, it's about the patents and the merits of the case," says Fish & Richardson attorney Gregory Madera. "We intend to put on a very vigorous defense." The firm will fire its first shot across the bow by April 15, the court's deadline for answers to Acacia's complaints.

After first describing the porn sites as "a billion-dollar industry--that's where the money is," Acacia's chief executive officer, Paul Ryan, now downplays the dispute as a "sideshow." "It's maybe 1% of our potential revenues," he sniffs, preferring instead to talk about "seriously meaningful discussions with major media companies"--which he declines to name. But Ryan, who is also the chairman of Acacia subsidiary Acacia Technologies (nasdaq: ACTG - news - people ), isn't shying away from the fight either. "We have to enforce our patents, and this group is collectively generating a large amount of revenues. We had to initiate this litigation to get a number of these peoples' attention level."

That he has. Acacia has become the talk of the Internet's adult world, which has gleefully flamed the company and its patent claims on various chat boards. "Has Acacia lost their mind?!" hooted a posting on Ynotmasters.com, an industry site. "Acacia is a LEECH that has invented nothing, and now wants us to pay them to use technologies they didn't do anything to promote," wailed another critic on LukeFord.com.

The controversy comes just as the company is trying to right itself after a difficult 2002. Acacia lost a big battle last fall, when a U.S. District Court ruled that the defendants in yet another case didn't infringe on the company's patent for the V-chip, which allows parents to block out objectionable material on their television set. Not that it matters much anyway: The patent expires this July. In another setback, the company's other business of designing "biochip" semiconductors settled a lawsuit last fall with Nanogen (nasdaq: NGEN - news - people ) that requires Acacia's CombiMatrix (nasdaq: CBMX - news - people ) unit to pay Nanogen the equivalent of $10.8 million in stock, cash and future royalties.

Acacia Research reported a net loss last year of $29.6 million on sales that plummeted to $882,000, from $24.6 million the previous year. If nothing else, the stock is a screaming bargain. The market values the entire company at just 43% of the $55 million Acacia has on hand in cash and cash equivalents. "All I know is I've been buying a lot of stock lately," Ryan says gamely.

Noble Trenham is not amused. A tough-talking, 69-year-old former Navy jet pilot who claims he slipped into Moscow's Red Square in 1960 to lecture the Communists about free enterprise, Trenham runs a small investment firm near Pasadena, Calif. He says he and his "friends" collectively own 30% of Acacia's stock. Trenham's firm, First Global Securities, has also helped find investors for a series of private placements in Acacia. But Trenham, who has battled with several companies over the years (and been in and out of court on several occasions) has lost confidence in Ryan and his management team.

"It's time for shareholders to rise up and do something," he says, acknowledging that he even called Spike Goldberg of HomeGrownVideo about attempting a takeover. "I don't believe there is a game plan that is going to build anything, and I believe the strategy is flawed. Am I going to just sit here and let it ground down to nothing? That's not my nature."

Less offended than bemused, Ryan is incredulous at Trenham's claim that he controls almost a third of the company's stock. "I find that inconceivable, unless he has a very broad definition of 'friends,'" Ryan deadpans about Trenham, who has the curious habit of memorizing the birthday of everyone in Acacia's management. "He is an unusual and colorful guy, and occasionally he has introduced the company to some really significant people. Once a year, he has some wild theory that he's going to do something grandiose to our business."

But Trenham and the porn guys aren't backing down "What it really comes down to is they want to partner up with us and take a piece of our money," says Gregory Clayman, president of Calabasas, Calif.-based Video Secrets. Using overseas studios, the company broadcasts interactive strip shows featuring women and men disrobing at a price of $4 to $5 per minute, depending on--never mind, better you don't know. "We don't need a partner for years and years."

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KRL

Guys like this that use legal crap to fuck hard working guys out of money typically will be cockily walking to their car one day after leaving the office and someone will just walk up behind him and give him a .44 pop-up ad to his head.

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Pipecrew

It will be nice to see a reduction in popups

MrPopup

Dude if it meant guys like this would cease and desist Id gladly drop the moniker.

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PowerCum

I have just patented the human race. If you are human you have to pay me. If you are an alien or mutant you should get a job at XMen 3 movie

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CjOverkill Traffic Trading Script
Free, secure and fast traffic trading script. Get your copy now

IXCASH

funny

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NetRodent

Pure foolishness.

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alexdeep

LMAO

OMG you guys are a bunch of ill informed, opinionated, hypocrits with childish responses. Its obvious most of you are just upset because you didnt come up with this idea first.

Dont hate the player ... hate the game!

dav555add

you have deep thoughts.................

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Undutchable

You're full of shit

smack

i own the patent to cancer. don't even think about it. i'll sue.

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Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war.

bauhaus

Brian Shuster has been working on that patent for years.... its his little jem.

Surprised he got media play like that...lol
Believe me Brian loves his lawyers...I will probably get a C&D just for posting this..lol

Hmmm audio ads... xxxaudiocash.com was a brian shuster dealio

still you gotta love this guy for pulling it off, and believe me that story is real he is indeed gonna own the rights to the popup.

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lEricPl

Um,

How can this be seeing as it is done with Java Script and the Browser software.

This is stupid. Really.

KRL

Yeh sure whatever you say mr newb with his first post. We know you are the grand poobar of porn.

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lEricPl

I doubt it.

Let him try to enforce it against Microsoft.

He will get killed in court.

Kiowas72

Hello,

first let me say I'm New here

... * Waits for the Warm Welcome *

next let me immediatly contribute to the Flame Fest !

So we all read the article ? Probally not .. looking at what many have written its amazing you can turn your computers on, let alone read the article the post is about.

the article says pending , for the really slow on here that means it has not been completed yet ...
If it goes through that means it has been prooved he came up with the idea first.. if that is the case then hard working people who have origanl ideas will be fine. it would only be the non hard working Cute and paste script kidies who get screwed, and i hate them so fuck them all to hell.

if it does not go through then i guess that guy is right, well he's still a moron and copied the code from somewhere.

and yes i wish i thought of this on my own in my owntime,

Who honeslty does not wish they came up with good idea?

Hate the Game, not he player

Pipecrew

You might want to research what "Patent Pending" means.

lEricPl

He came up with NOTHING.

If Java Script and the Browser did not support it, there would be NO PopUp.


It was written into Java Script and the Browser was it not?

m0rph3us

http://www.forerunners.org/WebLibrar...INDOW-ONUNLOAD

Copyright ? 1997 O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved.


http://www.webreference.com/hahahaha...hahaha/970106/
January 6, 1997

andi_germany

I have used pop ups in 1997 and I am sure other sites did it in 96 already because the hahahahahahahahahaha code to do it was easily available on the net. So his patent is just bullshit. He took someone elses idea and patented it. Thats not how it works and he will be kicked out of court.

I think everyone who was around 96 to 99 know who XPics was and what they did. For the damage this fuck did to the whole industry he needs to be beaten senseless.

MrPopup

funny how in about an hour a team of webmasters easily proved this guy wrong.

Wanna make a bet the US Patent Office cant do the same?

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Kiowas72

:D this forum rocks. more claims less facts should be the title

Kiowas72

Bet Taken

i will Bet you 1 Soda, perferable Dr Pepper, but i will acept Pepsi also after you loose.


well crappy bet, it has to go to court so it Could take a long long time,

Kiowas72

Pipecrew,

great point, except I was not posting about the legal definiation of the word. But people who are acting as if this patent was enfored upon them.


Although I do apreicate being flamed on as if i was a long standing member of your fine board !

Flame On !!!!

FATPad

I wouldn't bet on it. The patent office has already given patents on technologies they don't understand. Take a basic concept, throw in some technical mumbo jumbo and they won't really understand what you're trying to patent, just that no one else has tried to patent the same technical mumbo jumbo.

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lEricPl

Oops, did we forget to welcome you?

GO FUCK YOURSELF!

Kiowas72

Finally!

Thank You !

Megahurt

so this will be the fourth thread ive posted on, including the hey new webmasters come introduce yourself, and have yet to be welcomed. what the fuck... i think you guys are just a bunch of shit talking spam fucks with no pussy to stick your cock in. wheres my fucking flame?!?!?!
megahurt

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i like gooooooold

Kiowas72

GO FUCK YOURSELF !!!