Slashdot Mirror
Acacia Climbing the Food Chain
superflex writes "CNet and others have articles today related to a story that appeared here a couple months ago regarding Acacia Media Technologies, who hold several U.S. and international patents that they claim give them exclusive rights to compressed digital media transmission technologies. The previous article, for the lazy among you, was an AskSlashdot about whether the askers' pr0n site should pay license fees to these guys. Seems that since then, they've moved on to some internet radio sites, and are actually getting fees out of them. Their claims haven't been challenged in court yet, but they appear very broad, possibly covering PPV on cable/satellite as well as internet-based streaming. One wonders if they might try going after one of the big boys soon."
... what, about 100 years ago?
Morse? Nah, really. Probably not a strong argument for 'compression'.
Regardless, this is just one more of those 'communication should be free' fish in the barrel which someone ought to just tip over...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Don't be mad at these guys.
I breifly looked over their claims at the USTPO, and it looks pretty valid to me.
So don't be mad at them for having the foresight to come up with this in 1991, and wanting to make some money.
If you're going to get mad, get mad at the USTPO for granting such broad stretching patents in the first place.
The system is in place for things like this to happen, and I really don't understand why people are continually surprised when this type of thing happens. It will continue to happen until the US government changes the way the patent process works.
That being said, it is pretty slimy to hold a patent for 12 years and just now start to enforce it, but again, our current patent system model encourages this behavior, so din't be surprised when it happens again.
On the other hand, if this never happened, Slashdot wouldn't be so busy.
"A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn't have an air force." -William Blum
Digital cellular and PCS are covered by this patent as well. Wonder when Acacia will get to suing them -- and whether they'll be able to dig up examples of prior art.
Speaking of which, the telcos have been using digital compression for a very long time on their trunk lines; while it wasn't an algorithmic compression method, it did result in less total throughput needed. Would this be considered prior art?
The exciting world of legal precedent.
Perhaps the USPTO needs to establish a department to revoke/make recommendations for revokation of those patents that are overly broad and possibly other qualifications, too.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
If someone successfully sues them in court, do they have to pay back what they already collected from other companies?
It seem like a simple fix for patents would be:
1. if you don't enforce the patent in the first year you lose it
2. whatever the terms you make for anyone using a patent are the terms everyone gets
3. you can never change the terms of use for a patent after they are established
4. you get a fixed amount of time to submit a patent with no extensions
5. have the patent office actually do a check for prior art before accepting the patent
Those few changes would stop companies from broadsiding us with patents, but allow things that really deserve patent to continue to get them.
Pocket PC Games
Here's a brilliant idea for the government to chew on: Rescend all patents on electronics-based technology!
That way, we wouldn't have companies coming up with a Good Thing, patenting(sp?) it, then waiting until someone else starts making money off of it, then sueing them for all that they've gained!
I don't think I'm alone in saying that the way the US Patent Code works is extremely frelled up, and needs some MAJOR revisions NOW. I'm tired off all the sue-happy people and companies in US, but I guess that's the way a capitalistic democratic republic is supposed to work. I figure if we get rid of most of the big, monopolistic companies, and give more of the marketshare to the smaller, more diverse companies, maybe then we could start truly competing with Japan, Korea, et al. in the electronics marketplace.
And, as an added bonus, maybe then the politicians in the government will start to work for the betterment of the people, rather than whichever mega-corp hands them the most money that month.
Not trying to say that America is a bad country, because I'd rather live here than anywhere else, and the ideals of America are great. It's the people running the country that are corrupt and amoral. Get someone in the Presidentcy that truly doesn't care about money, and I'm pretty sure that we'd all see MAJOR changes in the way the government handles big corporations, and possibly giving fair taxation to everyone (you know....if you make more money, you pay more taxes, if you make ALOT more money, you pay less taxes?!?!? What the frell is up with that?????)
--CypherDragon
Technically, a digital camera uses compressed digital media transmission technologies to upload photos to your PC. Does this patent also cover this? How about FireWire interfaces on digital camcorders?
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise. - William Shakespeare
Personally, I feel that there are a wealth of smaller companies that Acacia will be able to sue or otherwise persuade to license their technology. Virgin was also a significant win.
I just used ASCII as an obvious and intuitive example. It doesn't even have to be digital code, just any code of fixed length where some of the "bits" are effectively redundant place holders.
I'd only point out that all bit strings that stand for some sort of character are character code. All digital computer code is just code "made from bits." 255 zeros followed by a 1, 1 and SOH are all the same character using a different "font" as it were, just as the Morse character ".-" is actually the same as "a". Printed Morse is actually human readable with a little practice. So is ASCII in decimal ( with a LOT of practice) if it comes to that, but why bother? Even the English alphabet itself is just a graphical code, and just one of many possible ones.
Don't get hung up on the particular *form* a character code takes. It's still a character.
KFG
"sent over standard telephone, cable or satellite broadcast channels"
I think he usage of the word "channels" is significant. The internet is not a channel based medium, but a switched packet network. A channel is a hardwired or negotiated data path that has persistence and is traversed over a dedicated point-to-point circuit or line.