Acacia has patented MP3s!
 

The Abstract for United States Patent Nº 5,132,992 Audio and video transmission and receiving system says:

This definition would cover MP3s, right?

If the mainstream media were made aware of the fact that Acacia will ultimately be seeking a slice of the MP3 pie from Microsoft, Sony, AOL, etc, it might attract a bit more attention than a bunch of pornographers being sued. Just a thought :glugglug

acacia is just a bunch of homos looking for new members

Is anyone else under the impression that they will not go after anyone that can defend themselves?

duh?

Money grab.........once MS and Yahoo get involved.....they will fold like linen.

mp3 is already patented by the inventors (fraunhoffer?)... they screw the big companies (and the small) for their license revenue.

software patents suck :(

'Where violence justified
Is just another pride
Under the surface lies
A holy plastic empire'

Any idea what the date is on that patent?

And are you pud's pussy?

Acacia has made it clear in numerous press releases that it has every intention of going after mainstream media, Education, and more. In fact, they have already made a move to go after Academia, hitting online universities.

In my opinion, a bunch of easy settlements with small fish companies is just going to help them when they go after the bigger whales in the mainstream.

http://www.impai.org

I am patenting the streaming of bodily fluids.

I wanna see them ask Microsoft for 2% of their gross :1orglaugh

I'm getting the patent on farting.

Sorry too late, I sold it!

No.

If patents are anything like trademarks, they'll need to go after ANYONE violating their licenses.

Of course, patents may not be anything like trademarks. I'm not a lawyer, I just pretend to be. :winkwink:

If you do not defend a trademark you can loose it (ie simply because you failed to defend it). Whereas you have a choice whether to defend a patent.

Mp3 is a layer of an mpeg. Unless they have mpeg patented too, I can't see how they could apply their patent to mp3s.

From what I've seen, they aren't claiming to have patented mpg's, mp3's or any other format. They're claiming they patented the act of delivering that video or audio.

Similar to not building a car or a road, but patenting the driving of a certain color car down that road.

Yep :glugglug And Acacia's patent clearly covers MPEGs. But MPEG development dates back to the 1980's:

http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/courses...G/report1.html

and other forms of video/audio compressed date back to the 1960's:

http://www.pha.jhu.edu/~sundar/inter...e/history.html

Acacia's patent was issued in 1991 which is clearly AFTER the technolgies had been invented :Graucho

Yep, it appears to cover the delivery of compressed audio or video (wmv, mpg, mp3, etc) via a telecommunications network such as the internet, cable, satellite, etc for later playback.

But someone else drove that certain color car down that road before 1991. So their patent is most likely invalid.

Right. I agree.

I'm just saying that the specific type of video or audio doesn't matter.

:1orglaugh Damn it Sherie!

We'll talk about this more in FL :Graucho