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OK, so they file a suit against me. I don't have the $$ to defend it and I end up getting a default judgment against me.

My question at this point is: how do they collect? Since I have no intention of ever writing them a check, they will have to get blood out of this rock some other way.

Can they put a lien on my car (if I own one) and my house (if I own one)?

Can they drive by and start taking stuff out of my yard (the way the IRS does)?

Can they deduct $$ from my wages (day job)?

Would not paying them have a negative effect on my credit rating?

BTW, if Acacia loses, do they have to pay back all the licensing fees they have collected so far?

the license agreements say they dont have to pay anything back if the patent ends up not being valid.

Is the suit agianst you personally or a company name (inc,llc)?

Yep ..if they have a judgement they can garnishee your wages.
Fucking slimey lowlife cocksmokers :BangBang:

Leave The US sue sue Sue happy assholes A

incorporate your business

I didn't incorporate so it would be against me personally. I had planned to incorporate at some point but never got around to it. Stupid, I know.

WHEN IS SOMEONE GONNA BURY THESE CREEPS?

No offence, but WHY IN THE FUCK DO PEOPLE DO THIS? It makes adult webmasters look like morons, and gives the dickless lawyers at acacia an incentive to keep filing.

For gods sake people, if you don't have the money to fight acacia, at least show up in court. Tell them you have a small business and can't afford a lawyer. Tell the judge you intend to fight the phony lawsuit and plan to introduce numerous cases of prior art, all of which you can download from links here at gfy.

Will you loose? Maybe. But that jury trial will be about 4 years from now. By then somebody else will have already beat Acacia so your case will be dismissed as moot.

A guy here in Philadelphia beat 2 counts of murder acting as his own attorney a month ago, I would think you'd have a better shot than him with this lame ass suit.

Why oh why would somebody ignore a legal summons and suffer a default judgement?

Yes, you are fucked. A default judgement can show up on your credit record, and they can now legally start proceedings to collect the debt you owe them.

My guess - by the time acacia collapses they will file for bankruptcy protection, so people who paid will get nothing back, agreements or not.

I am not a lawyer, so this is only my opinion, and I recommend you ask an attorney for a second opinion:

They cannot automatically get a default jugement because you cannot pay for representation.

The first thing I recommend to do is to write them a letter and ask kindly how EXACTLY you are infringing.

Worst comes to worse, Bankruptcy

Whats your ICQ boobmaster?

When you lose a civil lawsuit, they collect on judgments typically as follows:

Place a lien on your property

Levy your income / wages

Levy bank accounts

In extreme cases they can actually show up at your house and take everything in it with a few exceptions of things they can't touch.

That last case is really rare to happen, but I have a friend who lost a lawsuit that invovled tens of millions of dollars on the judgment. He told the plaintiff to go fuck himself, he'd never get a dime out of him. Well the plaintiff showed up at his million dollar estate with Sheriffs and a moving van and they emptied his entire house. And I mean emptied all the way. They even took his clothes, jewelry, paintings, furniture, electronics, tv's, etc. The only thing they left was a bed and a chair. They also took his private jet and his yacht. He went from being a multi-millionaire to penniless overnight and was in total disbelief.

Most times though before they get to property of any kind they trying to just collect the money. If they get no success by that route they usually sell the paper to a collections agency or another law firm at a discount. If the next owner of the judgment paper can't collect he resells it at a discount. Eventually it goes so far down the chain that someone can settle with you for pennies on the dollar and still make a profit on what they paid for it the judgment.

They do automatically get a default judgement if you do not show up in court. Case closed, you loose.

I'm not sure if this guy is saying he already got the judgement, or is anticpating it.

I would not bother to write Acacia a letter, except for amusement.

Reason being, if you get their "advertising materials" no need to repond, its just a sales brochure.

If you get a summons to appear in court, I think its safe to assume they have already checked out your website. They might use a Matrix database to send funny letters, but a judge would throw the book at them if they actually brought a lawsuit without any evidence of any kind.

If you cannot afford a lawyer, at minimum you should answer the suit by declaring that you are not aware of being in infringement of their patent, and if you are provided SPECIFIC URLS or examples, you will move to remove the offending materials. You have no intention of licensing to Acacia, and you will do whatever is required to put yourself in compliance with them.

If you fail to do anything, you lose, and you lose it all, see what happened to Go Entertainment, who failed to appear, lost by default, and had their domains suspended because acacia went to whatever lengths they could to back them into a corner.

You could lose everything.

If you have NOTHING to lose, who cares?

Realistically, if you don't have $500 - $1000 to get a lawyer to handle it, I would suggest selling everything and getting out of the business completely before the deadline, and stop worrying.

If you get a court summon simply SHOW UP!!!!!!!!. Take down your movies for the time being and go there. No you don't need a lawyer and I bet you get some sympathy from the judge when he sees a big cooperation suing an individual for something he obviously not even makes money from to pay a lawyer. Simply state that the patent is questioned already in court and you are not infringing on the patent anyway because you don't have any movies on your website.

It might even be that the lawsuit is thrown out due to unimportance and false claims. Don't forget to ask the judge to get your expenses back from Arcacia due to flase claims and you having to show up in court.

If the patent ends up not being valid, then the license agreements should become null and void in that there is no longer a patent to license, nor an agreement to adhere to.

It is incredibly stupid to not show up at court to defend yourself.

However, all is not necessarily lost. You should be able to vacate the default judgement.

Read here for a little info:

http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache... l=en&ie=UTF-8

If you really can't afford an attorney, go get free legal help. Read up on the law, ask others for help, maybe IMPA will help you. File the papers to ask the court to overturn the default judgement, AND provide a reasonable affirmative defense (A. you aren't infringing, B. their patent is not valid) and you should be okay.

As for them collecting, it's been covered, but I bet you they will come after your wages, your house, your cars, so go figure out how to appeal to overturn or vacate that default judgement.

NO, it specifically states in the licensing agreement that you don't get your money back if the patent is found invalid.

This is how Acacia was able to collect/keep $27M in licensing fees for V-CHip before Sony knocked it down.

Fight the Collections!

This collecting with no reparations should be addressed in the court case as well. A judge needs to set some sort of precedent in a case law arena to get it looked at closer to make a whatever you call it law where its passed by a legal body. Sorry, too early to come up with the term for that. lol Morrrre cawwwfeeee. ;-)p

Its no less than a protection racket and the Rico investigators should be looking into this very closely. How this ever got bent to the form they are using it for needs to be re-written. It just goes on to fund their next misadventure at both businessmans and taxpayers expense.

there is some very good advice in this thread.

IMO.

all webmasters SHOULD be incorporated in some form, and have an asset protection plan in place just to protect yourself against frivolous lawsuits.

incorporation will not protect you from an obscenity charge, it will protect your personal assets from bottom feeder law firms.

the least expensive way to incorporate is to go to a specialist who does nothing but incorporation. in the USA this can be done for LESS than the $1500 you would be paying to acacia.

webmasters who earn more than 200k/yr should consider a bahamian IBC or offshore entity.

That is unreal! What was your friend sued over, BTW? I wish someone would do something about all the BS lawsuits being filed in this country. It seems like the second you get a dime in your pocket, there is someone waiting to sue you to get it.

Patent lawyers coast a lot more than $500.00, I'm afraid. Besides, whether I can afford it or not isn't really the point. Why should I have to spend any money at all to defend myself against extortionists?

I agree about answering the charge and showing up in court. But with my luck, I would be the only webmaster who showed up and there would be an army of media waiting to greet me at the courthouse steps. I'm not all that keen on publicity given what I do for a living.

Yes, there is some VERY GOOD advice in this thread.

I also agree with you about incorporating. In fact, I'm doing that this week. Unfortunately, I doubt it will save me from Acacia if they decided to take me to court (with 20,000 other webmasters).

I can't believe that if someone sued them to recover lost $$ that they would lose. (Of course, I'm not a lawyer.) If the patents are invalidated, then they had nothing to license, so how can they argue that they should be able to keep $$ which should never have been paid to them in the first place? This is insane!! My head is spinning ......... :(

Their "agreement" has that clause so if you sign it, you can't sue for the funds. Pure and simple. It might be legal at the moment but its ridiculous.

But going LLC for less than $400 is the way you need to go BM. ;-)

There is a lot of incorrect information in this thread so I will try and correct it.


Assuming they get the default judgment there are several things they can do to continue collecting right there in that court. When they file a motion for default judgment more than likely they will also ask for an order requesting your domains be turned off. They will take this order to your host/register and have your domains(s)shut off. Since they know who your sponsors are, they could also possibly get an order taking any that money that your sponsor(s) owe(s)you.

Judgments are treated differently in every state. Basically for them to get a lean against any of your property they would have take the judgment and record it in your home state, and follow any procedures that your home state prescribes for out of state judgments In my state it is as simple as taking the judgment and mailing it to the county recorder. Ok once that judgment is recorded it becomes a lien in my state(for sake of example) on any real property (real estate)that is owned by me(for sake of example). Now in most states to get at your personal property (a car) or to garnish your wages they actually have to file a motion for a hearing called a (proceeding supplemental) where you will be ordered to appear in your local courthouse and answer questions like where are your bank accounts where are you employed etc. If you don?t show for this hearing, they can arrest you. BTW: You can?t contest any of their claims in the proceeding supplemental. I would assume in most cases for small time webmaster once they get the domain shut off it won?t be economically feasible for them to do anything else. However, the bad news is that the out of state judgment shows up on your credit report nation wide which will impair you from getting a car, house, credit card etc. The only way to clear the judgment is to file bankruptcy. Now since I am assuming you don?t have the funds to travel to California you might if you get sued consider filing a form of reorganization bankruptcy (chapter 11 or 13) which would allow you to continue operating your business and it would force Acacia to come to your neck of the woods to deal with you.

There are so many better things you can do than attempering to reopen a default judgment. Number one it is not easy to open a default judgment up. Legal matters are often complex. Most attorneys don?t practice patent law. I think it is crazy to think a laymen can defend himself/herself in a patent law case. Keep in mind even if the self defense route is taken one must have sufficient funds to travel to California, have a place to stay when you are there and so on in order to defend yourself. If you are your own attorney you will have to personally appear at every hearing in the case. About the only thing I would consider filing myself, is a Special Appearance for purposes of contesting personal jurisdiction and a motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction.

I'm not an attorney. I think there is a BIG difference between you writing them and an attorney writing them on your behalf! I'd scrap up a couple hundred just to do that. Even if the attorney was not a patent attorney. And even if you're gonna show up in court on your own. I wouldn't write them without legal help!! You could be screwing yourself. This opinion is what ya paid for it... I'm not an attorney, but will watch the practice tonight..

If you're gonna fight 'em, I think a patent attorney is required and oh about $250K...

BTW, I'd have to fight 'em myself too, unless a group that I may join comes to the resscue.

Someone had an interesting thought. If all of us sued them first in small claims court for what ever (Real and Good) reason, like unfair business practices or her-ass-ment, we'd break there back. Think of them sending attornies out to 1-2K suits in all 50 states. Throw in Canada and a couple of other countries too. That would be fighting fire with fire. Dumb you say? What about them sending this letter out to all of us that can't afford the fight.

Bet if they do sue someone, they'll pick on a little guy or three first.

You either need that attorney or if you have to do it on your own, it would mean really hitting the books. Getting the fight in a local court would be high on the list. Having been through it - there a ton of techical details to watch out for. If you travel to CA, you may be subjecting yourself to fighting there. Not an attorney, but something I'd study for sure.

Do this pro se (on your own) would be nuts! I wonder if the court would consider that? File informa poporus (sp) might get you somewhere... BUT again I'm not an attorney, just know enough to really get in trouble and that for this one I'd like some experienced help!

And why would Acacia write that in the agreement?

That is a very nice way to steal money, from hornest webmasters.

I would go to court, and i would use every cent i have to fight them and then i win that case, i bet many webmasters would help me get my money back, with collections or donations.

I think if a laymen is determined to defend himself/herself (not what I would recommend) one the routes to do so is to contest jurisdiction (assuming you don?t live in CA). Jurisdictional issues are fairly well settled and if you can come up with sufficient reasons (you don?t have any contact with CA is a must, your personal financial situation and ect) might be a better approach. Also don?t dismiss what a bankruptcy court can do for you.

(Sexzity was referring to my comment about not getting your money back from licenses once the patent gets invalidated.)

I refer you to the Webmaster License Agreement:
http://www.acaciatechnologies.com/pr...eAgreement.pdf


See Section 6.1


They are excuting on the same plan they did with V-Chip..racked up $27M in licensing fees before Sony knocked their patent out..and all that money the collected...stayed with Acacia...no refunds.


Fight the No Refunds!

What i meen was: They would not add 6.1 in the agreement if they knew that there patent would hole in court.

The problem is most affiliate webmasters don?t have very many cents. Even under the most optimistic scenario you mange to procure a patent attorney and he gets it dismissed on a summary judgment motion you are looking at a bare minium of a 2 year process and $100,000k. And you don?t get your 100k back.