Getting mainstream attention to Acacia and others
 

With the addition of a new writer (welcome Shar!) for FightThePatent.com, we will be pushing to get mainstream attention.

Feel free to post/send today's PR statement to those you know who can help to get the word out.

http://www.fightthepatent.com/v2/PR-1117.html

This is the start of a series of PR statements, so any help in spreading the word is greatly appreciated. Please email me to know what sources you know that accepted the PR...so I can start to create a mailing list for the next articles.

Thanks in advance,
brandon

ps. some FTPF supporters are emailing this PR statement to their customers to see if some of them might be connected to media (you never know who just might be one of your members)

For those that are link-click challenged, here is Shar Washington's Press Release for FightThePatent.com


If you own a website that offers any audio/video downloads, you could be sued!!!

Austin, TX - (November 17, 2003). Thousands of website owners across the world have found FINAL NOTICES in their mailboxes from a company called, Acacia Media Technologies Corporation (http://www.acaciaresearch.com) which is located in Newport Beach, California. In the letter, Robert A. Berman, Sr. VP of Business Development and General Counsel for Acacia, claims that his company owns five U.S. Patents (Patents Nos. 5,132,992; 5,235,275; 5,550,863; 6,002,720; 6,144,702) and 17 International Patents covering the transmission and receipt of audio/video content via the Internet. He warns webmasters: "You provide access to digital audio/video content via your website(s) without a license from Acacia, and are therefore liable to Acacia for patent infringement."

Acacia wants a royalty from everyone who has a website on the Internet, who are in violation of their alleged patent infringement by offering audio/videol downloads. Berman is giving websites until November 30, 2003 to pay a minimum of $1,500/year for a license or be sued in court for back royalties or be ordered to shut down their website.

Many people thought the letter was a joke, so they disregarded it, and quickly found themselves sued by Acacia in the state of California. Others have found themselves making a business decision to pay the royalties and hand over their yearly sales records in order to get a license from Acacia (Acacia's licensing is based on GROSS revenue).

Acacia has licensed their patent to adult website companies such as : Hustler, Interactive Gallery, Vivid Entertainment Group, and Wicked Pictures. They have been contacting universities, Fortune 500 companies, large and small websites.

Brandon Shalton, an entrepreneur in Austin, TX, created a website www.spokenmessages.com for some nuns who wanted to extend their ministry by using technology. SpokenMessages was to be a service that allowed church pastors to use a telephone to easily record a prayer, message, or a thought and within thirty seconds, the message was made available for playback via the web.

The service was about to come out of beta testing when Shalton found out about Acacia's Patent claims and royalty fees. Feeling that Acacia's patent claims were not valid, Brandon took down www.SpokenMessages.com and set up www.FightThePatent.com on August 12,2003.

The personal crusade of bringing awareness and search for prior art at www.FightThePatent.com , has now created the idea of creating a non-profit (501c3) organization called Fight the Patent Foundation. Shalton said: "The mission is to fight against patent abuse cases much like the way ACLU helps to defend companies and individuals in areas of constitutional issues. Patents are very important to protecting novel and innovative ideas. Bad patents are ones where the patent holder has broadly interpreted the patent to mean more than what was originally approved, and the existence of prior art that the USPTO missed upon original examination. My efforts are not anti-patent, just anti-bad patents."

Many individuals and businesses have found Shalton's website by word of mouth, Internet message boards, search engines, and newsgroups. Before August 12, 2003 most of those people did not understand about Internet patent infringements. Now, Webmasters are paying more attention to patent infringement cases.

Acacia is but one company in the space of audio/video patents. Other players include SightSound (suing CDNOW/BMG) and USA Video (suing MovieLink.com).

It's a very good idea. Do you think it will target every crowd wanted? Perhaps news that is more general without the factual patent information (of course having links to such information would be needed) would be the best route? Many people if really not interested / shocked / scared enough into reading it then they may just dismiss it.

A single release is great, but it's not enough to stir up things.

Some articles should be written with specific angles as well -- main thought being.. "Microsoft, AOL, Google, ...are all in violation and owe money says Acacia.." or something to that degree. Google is in violation because they link to sites who don't have Acacia's licensing, mind you, I believe a judge already said that Google is allow to link to any place submitted to them or spidered (because use of robots.. etc..)

Anyways, good work.. :)

Cheers,
Matt

Agreed.. with the addition of Shar as a volunteer columnist to FightThePatent.com, she will be a great asset to me to target articles and PR to help spread the word.

Kicking things up a notch......

:)


Fight the Non-Readers!

:BangBang:

i think the more attention, the better. personally, i believe that putting mainstream companies on the spot like AOL, Microsoft, Apple, Real Networks and all the others and forcing them to take a position on this issue publically will be a very good thing.

In my crusade to being awareness to these patent abuse issues, I have talked with several mainstream companies...and they are very concerned about companies like Acacia, and have allocated resources (legal minds) to investigate.

I have been sending prior art to multiple defense attorneys, and got feedback that there is some really good stuff that myself and the volunteer prior art searchers have found.

I believe that the major companies like Real, Apple, and Microsoft will not be targeted.. why bite the hand that feeds you?

Acacia has a much better strategy of targeting smaller companies who don't have the resources to fight.

The problem that Acacia will face, besides the mountain of prior art, is that mainstream companies can jump behind a defendant in litigation, and provide them with the defense attorneys and prior art to successfully invalidate the claims.

The battle is not over, and the war against patent abuse is not on the horizon.

Webmasters still need to get involved to fight against what they believe is wrong... apathy and complacency work against unity.



Fight the Couch Potato!

Some info concerning patent re-examination request like the one that is being done against the Eolas patent (Microsoft lost in court to Eolas for allowing IE to use hahahahahaed programs like Flash). The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has petitioned the USPTO and the USPTO has accepted the request.

Usually takes 3-6 months after filing to be addressed. Due to public outcry, the request took 1 week and the USPTO Director personally approved the re-exam request!

Information gathered from talking to several patent attorneys on re-exams:

The patent examiner will spend about 15 hours total on the re-exam..which is alot more time than is spent on the actual patent(!!!) before coming to a preliminary decision, before then talking to the patent holder.

A person or company pays the filing fee (about $1,300) and then needs to have a patent attorney craft explanations of prior art to invalidate the patent claims. The estimate cost is about $30k-$50K for the whole process in attorney time, not to mention money spent to find prior art.

A completed document is filed to the USPTO...and then the examiner reviews the information and discusses with the patent holder. The review is one-sided..only the patent holder is allowed to discuss the prior art points with the examiner.

The process could take 6-8 months (or longer) before a final decision is made.

If the prior art is solid and the patent holder cannot explain away the evidence, then the patent is revoked and invalidated.

It is better to argue in court with a judge, then to take your chances with submitting a document to the USPTO. Atleast with a judge, you can argue your points....with the re-exam, there is not discussion.

The downside is that the patent holder can continue to gain new licensees of their patent, until the final outcome has been determined.



Fight the Delays!

I know there are places online that list all the pic media outlets and their fax numbers to send press releases.

:tongue:

Brandon,

Are you an attorney? If so, can you argue before a Federal court? Which states are you a member of the bar? If I may ask.
Oh, let's throw in the US Supreme Court too?

Thanks,

I thought this was interesting readingarticle from higher education newletter

Can you give us the URLs?

I am not an attorney.....tho, I am studying to take the Patent Exam... no requirements of being a lawyer, the requirement is that you have a technical degree.....

Having passed the Patent Exam means i can be directly involved with USPTO to invalidate patents with them.

Most attorneys are licensed by the state bar..... there is another level of practice that allows a lawyer to litigate in federal courts.

If I were an attorney, would i be able to say 80% of the things i post on here??? :)

Couldn't you tell that there were no disclaimers before and after each of my posts? :)



Fight the Legalese!

I saqw a very interesting article about all of this on another board. Won't provide a link but it's run by someone called Lee N.

All about how they are going after colleges and places of learning.

Seems they are going after Stanford Uni.

Copied from elsewhere.

They really are the worse led bunch of clowns. Do they honestly think they are going to be able to present to a jury a good enough argument that results in a bunch of scheming lawyers taking money from teachers and professors educating the next generation. :1orglaugh

I understand your sentiment, but I believe the judge and jury are going to look at the facts and merits of the case..outside of the application or implication towards educational sites..... if that were the case, then the judge/jury could look at this patent claim as a way of shutting down "smut".

IF this patent were valid, the patent holder has every right to acquire licenses from schools and universities, as well as any other company that was using it's invention.

The defendants will get their day in court to present a "mountain of evidence" to prove that Acacia's claims don't stick.

And as you know, if the claims don't stick, you must acquit.

:Graucho


Fight the Johnny!