Patent Enforcement.
 

Here is a nice little letter and excerpt of the phone call I had with these people.


ACACIA
MEDIA
Technologies
Corporation

Robert A. Berman
Sr. VP Business Development & General Counsel
Telephone (949) 480-8333 Fax: 480-8390
email [email protected]

October 11, 2002


Dear

Acacia Media Technologies Corporation owns a portfolio of patents dating back to 1991 covering content delivery methods such as video on demand, audio on demand, and video streaming on the Internet. It has recently come to our attention that you are using products and selling services in connection with these delivery methods that utilize technology covered by our patents. Our patents include U.S. patent Nos. 5,132,992; 5,234,275; 5,550,863; 6,002,720; 6,144,702; and an open continuation.

Acacia develops technologies in the media field, and we have significant experience in licensing technologies and enforcing patents. We request that you immediately contact your patent lawyer and examine your current and future product and service offerings relative to this patent portfolio. Acacia is prepared to license these patents on reasonable terms to you, and we would like to schedule a meeting with you to discuss a license. I look foward to your prompt reply.

Thank you,

Sincerely,
Robert A. Berman

500 Newport Center Drive. 7th Floor, Newport Beach, CA 92660

(nothing below is a direct quote, and only from memory of my call today.)

Now Mr. Berman openingly spoke of how the patent purchases and other future purchases shall be enforced. He went into detail about enforcing and his legal ability to go after prior licensing fees. He stated his fees would be based on the profit of the company. His qoute was 1,500.00 per year for 100,000.00 or less.

He stated the letters were just getting sent out (apparently I was lucky and got one first), that he has several thousand webmasters, and content providers on his list, with more to be added.

He claimed he wasnt trying to put people out of business. Nor double dip, yet in the same breath he stated that he would be having the content providers pay a license, and the website operators pay a license. This not only covered the streaming of it, but general delivery over the internet. As in my case, allowing webmasters to download a ZIP file that contains a Real format video. Which in my case no one is being charged, and I am using real to encode, zip to compress, and standard transfer protocols to send (basic download).

buch of lawyer talk,,,please translate

if your using video on the net in any shape or way, they want you to pay a licensing fee.

LOL,, this reminds me of that thing amazon claimed about inventing the pay per click idea

yeah same deal, Yet has more of a perfect 10 feel to the suit.

this reminds me of the guys who wanted to patent hyperlinking.

Right click save target as I believe was created by the makers of Internet Explorer... I have videos (AVI - which don't stream) and my members download them via right click or download managers.

http://www.bountyquest.com - let's setup a challenge

Has acacia taken anyone to court yet and won ?

I have no idea if they have won anything as of yet.

My few videos as I stated do not stream. They are videos that I encoded in real producer (eww I know), that I then put into a zip file, to have people download them, so they in turn could use them how they wanted.

As far as I can tell I am just using a compression technology, and delivering a package to someone via a network.

5,132,992 - Jan 1991
A system of distributing video and/or audio information employs digital signal processing to achieve high rates of data compression. The compressed and encoded audio and/or video information is sent over standard telephone, cable or satellite broadcast channels to a receiver specified by a subscriber of the service, preferably in less than real time, for later playback and optional recording on standard audio and/or video tape.




Hmmm

is the banner patented?

i also think consoles are patented also

so they are going to take to court every website owner that has an image linking to another URL ?

:2 cents: is that these patents exploit others' technology.
ie consoles = Javascript
video = MS/Apple
banners = don't even go there. IMG + link

That's a bit fague...... wouldn't it have to be in a specific format which they actually provided. Sounds like they are going be challenging SKY/CABLE with this too judging by that.

Patent law is all fucked up in the USA.

You can patent pretty much anything. However, the validity of the patent isn't determined until you take people to court to enforce it.

Unfortunately, that makes it a lawyer fight. He who has the most money for lawyers is gonna win.

You can have a totally valid patent and if you cant afford to go after people to enforce it, then it is worthless. Or as is the case with this guy, you can have a totally bullshit claim and go after guys you think do not have the money to fight it hoping they'll pay what you ask rather than go to court.

It can literally take years and tons of money to the lawyers to resolve one of these things in the court system.

I received the exact same letter from Robert Berman and I called him to discuss what the hell he is talking about. I zip my videos for a webmaster to download and he said even in that case I am using his technology.

I told him that I would remove the ability for webmasters to download videos they purchased before I paid him a dime. I'll post a CD rather than IMHO be blackmailed by bullshit like this.

Who was it that patended the hyperlink? That's what this reminds me of...:321GFY

Hello we received the same shit... this guy is totally drunk. I didn't spend a minute on it and I'll not until I received a court order. This is really ridiculous... those patends doesn't apply to zip download (the only technology we use) and if it applying to streaming technology, he should call Microsoft...much more money in perspective.

And if you really want to laught, check out the second patend :)

I think the guy is trying to scare webmasters into paying a license fee by scaring them with legal costs. He is only going for the small sites that can't afford a major legal battle the same as PanIP is doing right now.

Sounds like the one several years back about JPEG compression. They wanted to sell licensing all over the place to anyone who had JPEGs on a website. Actually got a few takers back then they claimed.

Well I am just dumping the one video we have. Hell we give away content, so its not like I have a huge profit margin. I know he wouldnt win a legal battle, but hell I can not afford a legal battle of this type.

So I just asked him if he was going after ifriends. :1orglaugh Of course he didnt know what it was at first. Then he pulled it up and said it will be on his list. I figure they can fight this shit instead of me.

http://www.techlawjournal.com/intelpro/20001221.asp

They lost in court.

those letters are just big lawyer talk to scare you,,
i would do shit til they give me papers to goto court

yup. I doubt they have the $ and time to sue a couple million webmasters. They'll just go after the big fish but considering this guy doesn't even know who ifriends is....

Yeah I know its just a scare tactic. Yet I am only looking at 1 video that is very old and rarely downloaded.

Cost to remove it: 0.00

Cost in revenue if I remove it: minimal

Cost to file an Answer if sued for past licensing issue : 70.00

Cost to deal with a court action: Minimum 2,000.00

Cost to deal with a lawyer who's main business is filing self lawsuits: Fucking rediculus.

Yet another reason why there needs to be a stong adult webmaster lobbying/trade group.

Think about how powerful the RIAA is. This industry would never be that powerful, but there is enough money (not to mention the number of customers adult sites have access to) that there could be some sort of powerful industry organization.

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This industry would never be that powerful, but there is enough money
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That is probably true, but if we were to set it up as a first amendment organization, that would go a long way to boosting out power. And, I believe the point about our members is important. If webmasters who became members, and gave a small percentage of their revenue based on sales, then they could offer free membership in that organization to their members. Essentially, co-opting the members. That would dramatically increase the apparent numbers. There are other organizations that do the same thing. I'm talking like one cent for every hundred dollars of revenue, maybe even less than that. Many groups do this on an honor system, it's simply seen as good business.

And, this is the important part, congress, state legislatures, and politicians in general find it much more difficult to pull bullshit when someone is sitting in the room representing millions of people.

THis is a very broad brush I'm painting with here. But, the essence is that it is past time that we got together and organized to leverage what political might we may have.

This is obviously US-'centric,' so my apologies to our friends are not in the US. But, this would benefit you, as well, because what the US does often has repercussions around the world.

Any thoughts?

Good idea in principle. It has been tried a few times. But organizing webmasters is a lot like herding cats...

ok hell puppy, then who's got the can of tuna?

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organizing webmasters is a lot like herding cats...
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So is organizing lawyers, doctors, gun owners, etc. And, add to that the creative nature of what we do. But, you know, if we don't get organized and begin working on our own agenda...we will continue to be at the mercy of the agenda of others. Add to that the fact that we are an easy target and the need for some organization is even more apparent; even critical, I would say.

All of us are not going to agree on everything, but we clearly have some united objectives...and that is enough to begin.




"Neidermeyer, dead, Marmaland, Dead...Wormer...Dead!"

Thats the problem with the stupid USA patent office, they are processing so much shit, they just gave out a bunch of crappy patents during the time the internet was just beginning and some of these jerkoff companies think they own an idea?

Did that person claiming the patent on the streaming video develop the downloading and streaming techniques that are being used? If so he should go talk to Microsoft as there the ones who are using it with Real and internet explorer.

If he emails me I'll politely tell him to go shove a giant dildo up his ass...

Sammy

i keep hearing about this, but i've never heard jack from them myself.

talk about a get rich quick scam.

I had the same correspondence with this guy 2 months ago. He sent me a lot of tables and charts and other technical shit. I said him: yes sir , I heard something about Internet , but sorry, I?m too stupid and really nothing understood, so GFY :321GFY

and he really fucked off:1orglaugh

lots of info about the fucknuts here.

http://www.youmaybenext.com/