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...)?

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.

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.