Acadia Streaming Patent Contested

Anonymous Coward writes "Since last year Acadia Research has sent hundreds of letters to various porn web sites to arrange royalty deals, picking on the small fry before trying to take on well-heeled companies such as Disney. However, many small fries refused, and now 40 firms have joined forces and are embroiled in a suit with Acadia. Fish & Richardson (a prominent intellectual property law firm) have taken their case. The best part? CEO Paul Ryan's obvious sour-grapes-syndrome, he goes from describing the web porn industry as a "billion-dollar industry" where the money is to a "sideshow" that's "maybe 1% of our potential revenues". Check it out here"

Comments

Forbes

[leviramsey]

This isn't the first Forbes anti-excessive patents article they've run... as a matter of fact, I've seen links to a couple already on Slashdot. Could Steve Forbes be pushing for patent reform to be a Republican plank in '04 (especially if he decides to run again...)?

Re:Forbes

[deadsaijinx*]

I'm pretty sure that Bush will be the runner for the republicans come 2004, but that may change depending on how this war goes. However, If Forbes (or anyone else) where to run and have Patent Office reform as an issue, I would definitely listen. I think that it is time for the Gov't to get back in touch with the people. (now, to get back on topic)

Your right, a LOT of slashdot articles are all about excessive patent frenzies, but it really is an important issue. Myabe some of you out there are saying, "Heh, it's just a bunch of dirty porn sites..." (some of you are going, "OH NO! This might mean the end of my favorite site!!!") and this ignorance about the world around us is very worrisome. One of the things I love about slashdot is that much of the communtiy knows of the problems we face today and wish to seek action. Especially in this case. So many sites run streaming video these days, and I would personally loathe Acadia for any damage it does to the already struggling internet economy.

People just want to make money, and that is good. People want to make money at the expense of everyone else, that is bad.

Re:Forbes

[Farley Mullet]

Could Steve Forbes be pushing for patent reform to be a Republican plank in '04 (especially if he decides to run again...)?

And court the all-important geek vote? Steve Forbes has about zilch political credibility aside from the soabox afforded to him by his publishing companies and the fortune that those companies provide him. He certainly won't be able to mount a primary challenge against a sitting president if he runs as a republican, and running as a third party candidate pretty much ensures that he'll be the butt of late night talk-show host jokes for the length of the campaign and that his supporters will look like cranks.

yet one...

[deadsaijinx*]

more case of Patents gone crazy. The patent office was designed to protect ones ideas and STIMULATE growth, not to allow people to suddenly restrict the use of a VERY commonpractice. I can't say that I'm too pleased with their lawsuit, but I do appreciate the nuances. If I created something, I'd sure as hell want to keep it protected and to earn royalties. Yet at the same time, this is abusing the system. They have a patent on something. That something becomes common practice. That patent becomes lucrative. Company suddenly goes after people using common practice. And they go really low, because they beleive that the porn industry, made of lots o lil fishes, won't be able to defend themselves. After all, the court will just frown down on these "dispicable" people (hey, everyone needs to make a living).

I am all for patents, and for protecting your ideas. but I am also for the expansion of ideas and the advancement of us all. So poo-on-you Acadia!

Re:yet one...

[gregmac]

That raises an interesting idea. Shouldn't the onus be on the patent owner to enforce their patent when someone else first starts to violate it? Sitting on your hands for a few years while many companies violate your patent, then suddenly decided you want to collect on them is akin to entrapment.

By waiting, you're simply allowing more people to violate the patent and increasing the overall payoff for yourself when you go to file suit against all the companies (as opposed to doing it to the first one and stopping future patent violations).

It's also not fair to put the onus on the other side, as there are literally millions of patents, and searching for patents on every little proccess would be futile. Espessially with some of the descriptions they have for software processes, and being able to construe them as patents on something like hyperlinks or cookies.

Re:yet one...

[Steven Blanchley]

That raises an interesting idea. Shouldn't the onus be on the patent owner to enforce their patent when someone else first starts to violate it?

No.

That sounds like the situation with trademarks today: if your trademark is infringed, and you don't defend it, you lose it. That's how we ended up with companies being ridiculously overzealous about trademarks. Remember KIllustrator? Remember the mailing list owner who received legal threats because someone had posted a message with the subject 'sendmail for dummies,' and it was in the archive?

A company with an overbroad patent can screw everyone over whether they enforce it immediately or not. The only way out is not to issue overbroad patents.

Re:yet one...

[gregmac]

That sounds like the situation with trademarks today: if your trademark is infringed, and you don't defend it, you lose it. That's how we ended up with companies being ridiculously overzealous about trademarks.

So? Is this really a bad thing in regards to patents? If you don't defend your patent, and over the next few years you start getting companies, formats and standards that are actually infringing your non-enforced patent, how is it fair to say you still have a right to it? You'd suddenly be putting companies out of business (RealNetworks would be hard-pressed to survive without streaming media, for one). You'd be forcing open-source initatives to pay royalties they obviously can't afford (Ogg can stream).

So yes, if you don't enforce your patent, you should lose rights to it. Basing your business model on a misuse of the patent system - namely, making an obscure patent, waiting years for enough people to violate that patent without knowing, and then suddenly bringing them all to court and get a big payoff - should not be allowed.

The only way out is not to issue overbroad patents.

Yes, that's true. But there are many many problems with this. Often the patent office doesn't have people with enough knowledge to decide if a patent is too broad or not. Often patents are filed on new research where there are only a couple of people in the world that know enough about it to decide if it's overly broad - and those are the people filing the patent.

So really, it becomes impossible to stop these patents from being filed. Instead, it should be rememebered that the patent system is designed to protect intellectual property, and not a place to make money by basically using entrapment.

All I want...

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

Is a royalty-free streaming video feed of the court proceedings. They promise to be quite entertaining.

Use It Or Lose It

[schnarff]

I know that our current patent system is set up so that, if you don't defend your patent for a certain amount of time, you can't just come back and start attempting to enforce it. Perhaps, as we see more and more cases like this, it would be smart for the Congress or the Courts to much more clearly define the limits on trying to enforce a patent after you didn't bother for a while. Though this might lead to more vigorous legal action to defend ridiculous patents in the short-term, it might do good long-term by helping prevent fiascos like this one (or the one where some company tried to claim they'd patented the hyperlink...etc, ad nauseum).

Re:Use It Or Lose It

[Steven Blanchley]

I know that our current patent system is set up so that, if you don't defend your patent for a certain amount of time, you can't just come back and start attempting to enforce it.

You must be thinking of trademarks; see my comment on that. Patents cannot be lost by neglect to defend them. However, it may happen that the patent cannot be enforced in a certain case.

If company B has been infringing company A's patent for five years, and company A knew about it all along, and then suddenly decides to sue over it, B can use as a defense that, in effect, A's ignorage of the infringement excused it.

But if company C then comes along and infringes the same patent for the first time, A would still be able to enforce the patent on C. So patents are never lost completely, only partially under certain circumstances.

Also, this kind of situation doesn't tend to come up very often.

Failed Business Models

[TuballoyThunder]

A quote that I found interesting in the article was:

Acacia Research reported a net loss last year of $29.6 million on sales that plummeted to $882,000, from $24.6 million the previous year. If nothing else, the stock is a screaming bargain. The market values the entire company at just 43% of the $55 million Acacia has on hand in cash and cash equivalents. "All I know is I've been buying a lot of stock lately," Ryan says gamely.

It seems to me that the business model of getting vague or overly broad patents does not provide a steady income stream. If you go to their web site you find that they still list their V-chip technology (even though they lost a patent enforcement case--guess the patent was not that important) and their biochip technology (also a loser in the courts).

The bottom line is that there is a desperate need for patent reform. My first suggestion is a peer review process. Technology specialization has gotten to the point where I do not think a fulltime patent clerk can stay current in a field. Second, the patent process must be completed in a short timeframe. If you cannot provide a clear patent right away, then you probably do not have good idea. The current patent process has a disclosure document program that can be used to help establish precedent. It even provides for a patent pending. IMHO those two concepts provide sufficient protection of an idea. The purpose of a finite timeframe is to reduce the number of submarine patents.

A dissenting opinion to my view can be found here.

This is getting stupid

[rf0]

Haven't the US patent office worked out yet the system is being abuse? I mean as they are going for streaming media does this mean they could go for people who are downloading MP3's (legal or not). This case deserves to be kicked out of court or its going to be hell for everyone. Of course if this is allowed I'm going to patent toilet paper and then ask for 1% of everyone income. Now that would be crap :P (pun intended)

Rus

When was this patented?

[Sandman1971]

Anyone know when this was originally patented? I can't seem to find it at the Patent Office online. I remember watching streaming video/audio in Real Player around 95, and videoconferencing in 90-91 (which is streaming video). Unless they patented this in the early 80's, there's TONS of prior art to this.
Hmmmm, maybe I'll patent the idea of prior art. Wonder if it's been tried already.

Prior Art: The process of which indicates if an already existing patent and/or use was already pre-existing. If anything remotely acts/looks/operates/functions to/like anything already existing, they are in violation of this patent.