Posted on 08/16/2004 4:38:59 PM PDT by QQQQQ
IMAGINE being able to set up a tollbooth on the Internet. Now imagine collecting a small fee every time anyone in the United States clicked on the Web to watch a video of a car advertisement, to listen to an audio clip of a garage band or to review an updated credit card statement.
Sound far-fetched? Acacia Research Corporation, an obscure but well-financed company in Newport Beach, Calif., has a portfolio of patents that, it claims, allows it to do exactly that.
Acacia holds five patents covering streaming video and audio. The earliest one, numbered 5,132,992, was issued in 1992.
In 2002, the company began sending out letters demanding licensing fees, largely from the lucrative online pornography industry. But of late, it has stepped up pressure on financial and educational institutions and news organizations, including The New York Times Company, which has received a letter from Acacia relating to its corporate Web site. In June, Acacia sued nine cable and satellite companies, including Comcast, DirecTV and EchoStar Communications. In late July, it sent out more letters demanding licensing fees from educational organizations that offer Web-based classes.
"We don't want to make irresponsible statements like the patents cover every kind of streaming media," said Robert Berman, executive vice president of Acacia.
However, he said, anyone viewing stored streaming video or listening to stored streaming audio on the Internet using the most common media players - those produced by Apple Computer and RealNetworks, for example - are probably violating his company's patents.
Moreover, he said, the patents cover stored digital streaming media not just on the Internet but also over cable and satellite networks.
Johns Hopkins University received a letter last year from Acacia, which asked for what would amount to 2 percent of the university's revenues.
"Is it reasonable to even make this kind of request?" asked Wes Blakeslee, associate general counsel of Johns Hopkins University. "We are nonprofit institutions who are already worried about leaving a pack of people behind because education is too expensive. The idea of long distance learning is to make education more affordable."
Hopkins fired back a letter asking for more information but has not yet received a response. Acacia's new round of letters appears to have gone to small colleges, like Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno, Nev. The letters ask for about $5,000 a year in annual licensing fees.
Marc S. Kaufman, a patent lawyer with Nixon Peabody in Washington, who is not affiliated with the company, said that, at least on their faces, the patents appear to be extremely broad. "They are able to go after anybody who is streaming any kind of content over the Internet," he said.
But whether Acacia will prevail in the courts is another question, Mr. Kaufman said.
From the steam engine forward, proprietary claims for nascent American technology have been thrashed out in court, but Acacia appears to be the first publicly traded company whose sole business is the licensing of patents.
"They are not a technology company; they are just a company full of lawyers," said Dan Rayburn, executive vice president of StreamingMedia.com, a Web site and industry association. "They acquire patents and then sue."
Mr. Berman said such distinctions were irrelevant.
"It's not like we steal the patents from the inventors and the companies from which we buy them," he said. "Individual inventors and many companies don't have the money or expertise to enforce their patents. They receive royalties from our licensing and enforcement efforts and they can devote their time to inventing."
Mr. Berman said that Acacia Research had about $30 million in cash on hand. The company was formed in 1992 as a venture capital firm financing biotechnology, dot.com enterprises and chip design. One company it invested in was Soundview Technologies, which it ultimately acquired. Soundview owned a patent covering the V-chip, which allows parents to screen their televisions for content. In 2002, Acacia Research split into two subsidiaries, Acacia Technologies and CombiMatrix, a biotech firm based in Mukilteo, Wash., which unlike Acacia Technologies develops its own technology.
The V-chip patent earned Acacia $26 million in licensing fees from a wide range of electronics manufacturers.
This year the company is expected to receive $2 million to $3 million in royalties for the streaming media patents from 169 licensing agreements.
In July, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization that is skeptical about the value to society of software patents, announced the winners of its "busting patents" competition, which sought nominations for the worst Internet-related patents.
"Acacia was overwhelmingly the winner, by about 4 to 1," said Jason Schultz, a lawyer for the association, based in San Francisco. "It's a clear indicator as to who public enemy No. 1 is."
Mr. Schultz said his organization was assembling documentation to formally request that the patent office re-examine the Acacia patents.
The pornography industry also has proved to be a feisty foe. Early on, Acacia licensed its patents, under undisclosed terms, to the some of the largest players in the industry, including the publishers of Hustler and Playboy as well as at least a half-dozen smaller players like SmutBucks.com. Nonpurveyors of porn, like the Walt Disney Company, have also signed agreements.
But a group of porn companies, led by HomeGrownVideo.com and represented by Fish & Richardson, a well-known intellectual property law firm, have banded together to fight Acacia. Their suit is pending in federal court in California and likely will not be resolved until next year.
Last year Technology Marketing magazine hired PatentRatings, a consulting firm in California, to independently analyze the strength of Acacia's patents, using a computer algorithm that compares patent claims. The company said that Acacia's patents were "very solid."
But those who are targets of Acacia's licensing program may take comfort in a recent victory handed to three companies - Sony, Sharp and Toshiba - who refused to pay any royalties to Acacia for its V-chip patent.
Last week, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, the nation's highest patent court, upheld a ruling that those television manufacturers do not infringe the V-chip patent and thus owe Acacia no royalties. The companies that have already paid Acacia $26 million in V-chip royalties, however, will receive no refund.
Patents may be viewed on the Web at www.uspto.gov or may be ordered through the mail, by patent number, for $3 from the Patent and Trademark Office, Washington, D.C. 20231.
Moreover, he said, the patents cover stored digital streaming media not just on the Internet but also over cable and satellite networks."
Theses must be some patents!
Wasn't adoption of the V-Chip mandated by law? Did they ever donate to Al Gore?
Oh, this is too damn easy. Insert your own Al Gore joke here.
Butt Al Gore invented the internet.
Patents on software are the most damaging single thing to the software industry. When software was "not patentable", there was tremendous growth. Now, stagnation is beginning.
The fact of the matter is that many people have many great ideas which, for various reasons, they do not turn into a usable product. In many cases, it would be clear and obvious to many people that X would be a great idea if Y were possible. Figuring out how to do Y is a real breakthrough. Unfortunately, it's often possible for someone who has no clue how to do Y to patent the idea of doing X. Such a person can then reap the rewards if someone else figures out how to do Y.
The stagnation is a result of many factors, but I'd tend to blame the emergence of spyware and spam as being just as significant as software patents. Much of the stuff that made computing great was developed in an era where it was reasonable to download some new program from some unknown author and try it out. Today, such a policy would border on insanity.
What about the patent on writing letters of the alphabet or numerals side-by-side instead of all on top of each other? To say nothing of the patent on writing a blank space, and using that blank space as a separator between words or numbers. As fundamental as Micro$oft's patent on 0's and 1's.
Imagine me getting a bill from this clown and telling him to shove it up his ***
Let's nuke'em from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.....
The problem with all overly broad patents is prior art.
All it takes is one example and the court will though the patent out and you are left with a huge legal bill. Only the lawyers profit from dumb patents.
These patents will go down the same way. What is'nt covered by prior art is obvious (which is not patentable, but is subjective). The real problem is the patent office will let a kid patent swinging sideways if the forms are filled out properly (which happened, his dad is a patent lawyer out to prove a point).
They probably have more lawyers than employees!
Acacia Research-Acacia Technologies
500 Newport Center Drive
Newport Beach, CA 92660
Phone: (949) 480-8300
Email: info@acaciares.com
Web Site: http://www.acaciaresearch.com/
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SOURCE: Yahoo! Finance |
Does anyone have the exact quote on Al Gore's Internet creating claim? Somebody wrote to our local paper saying that Al Gore only said he passed federal guidelines and blah-blahs to allow the Internet to be what it is today.
AT&T had videophone in what, 1964? Doug Engelbart's amazing demo where he tied in live video over remote links in real time to a computer occurred in ... 1968 .
IBM, AT&T, Philips all have huge patent portfolios. They can crush these guys at will.
Someone patented the idea of field-stripping a Glock, inserting a live round into the chamber, and re-assembling it so as to allow the firearm to be carried with a round in the chamber but the striker not cocked; making the weapon for use thus only requires pulling the slide back about 1/4".
I have no idea why this guy patented that, or what he could possibly do with the patent, but the patent was granted nonetheless.
All it takes is one example and the court will throw the patent out and you are left with a huge legal bill.
Another group of lawyers that needs to be crushed.
Patent barratry at work for you.
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