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."

Comments

Prior art should be ...

[torpor]

... 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...

cell

[TheSHAD0W]

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?

Re:They won't go after the big boys until..

[Oculus Habent]

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.

What about the important stuff???

[LordYUK]

Like a link to the "the askers' pr0n site"?!? huh? huh??

sheesh... =)

Much more on Acacia Research here

[MarkRH]

We wrote one of the earliest stories on Acacia Research here, complete with detailed royalty information, interviews with Acacia representatives, and exactly how the online porn industry planned to fight back. We also covered the Virgin Radio license agreement in this story.

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.

You've got to be kidding ...

[molarmass192]

Compressed audio and video transmission patented? In 1991 at that? Come on, that's like me patenting that you can wear shoes and socks at the same time. Digitally compressed video and audio existed LONG before these jokers. I mean CDs used PCM back in the mid-80s, and as for video, look here and here and about 20,000 more references on Google. This patenting of ideas that are just naive bundles of existing concepts just blows me away ... STOP THE INSANITY!