Great job Farrell. You are the one of the best guys I have had ever had the pleasure of meeting. Everyone in this business owes you and the people at Homegrown for all the hard work you have done, in this case.

Take Care

Porno Dan

Nice.. glad I was able to dig in and research some stuff to give you guys back in the day, hopefully at some point the stuff I gave helped in the massive puzzle to invalidate their claims..

Thank you for getting that infamous "low hanging fruit" quote out of Berman - that certainly riled folks up and made a lot more people aware when this all started...

They have teamed up with Microsoft and are attacking Linux companies now (Red Hat and Novell). But their ultimate strategy is to eventually attack any business or government that even uses linux and target them for patent extortion.

http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS2013674721.html

I guess they are moving onto greener pastures.

They are pure scum. Patent troll company.. all they do is collect patents and sue people.

They have a subsidiary called "IP Innovation" that is now suing Red Hat software and Novell.

Can read up on it at groklaw.net if anyone is interested. Some pretty big conspiracy theories going on (the plausible kind, not the tinfoil hat kind).

The brilliant part about it is, that Microsoft can keep their hands "clean" so to speak. MS doesnt go after these companies themselves because of the mutually assured destruction scenario. Other companies would be able to leverage their patents against MS, if MS leveraged their patents against them. But with the shell of a company, Acacia, acting on their behalf, theres no way for the other companies to damage MS's patent portfolio, or leverage their patents against them.

Score a few points for the low hanging fruit. Nice job guys.

Fuck Berman and the other scumbags at that company.

I don't know about brilliant, Ballmer "predicted" the lawsuit 2 days before it was public and Acacia added two scumbag executives from Microsoft to their company roster. That doesn't strike me as being overly discrete, but probably discrete enough for wall street though.

Story on XBiz - http://www.xbiz.com/news/web/85508

Can you guys give me more info on the backstory? I'm currently taking an IT law course, so patents are one thing we study...

We all owe you and the others who "fought the fight" a HUGE thankyou!

dave cummings

I dont know the backstory on their adult cases, but go read http://groklaw.net for the story so far on the Red Hat/Novell suit brought by Acacia. Lots of good reading there.

Acacia launched a licensing campaign/lawsuit threat against adult companies first figuring that the adult industry would do anything to stay out of court. Once of their directors even claimed in a live interview on D$'s show that they considered our industry a "long hanging fruit" and even quoted the Godfather II line about "only wanting to dip its beak" into our profits.

After researching their history and prior claims and hiring one of the best IP firms in the United States to help decide what to do, Homegrown Video, Video Secrets and a group of other companies banded together to challenge their claims, resulting in an ongoing litigation.

Many companies did choose to license and I have heard from reliable sources they have been hit with increasing rates and additional licenses, besides having to disclose their earnings in a regular required audit by Acacia.