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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"
In other news, Amazon plans to sue every site on the internet that uses cookies, as well as Microsoft for allowing sites other than Amazon to stores cookies.
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...)?
Yeah, yeah, go ahead & reply w/ the obligatory joke about /.ers "not having to worry about getting sued for infringement."
Think, write, think, edit, think...then post.
Eight firms agreed to Acacia's terms. But 40 didn't, and Acacia promptly slapped them with lawsuits. Rather than buckling, though, several of the porno sites joined together and stood their ground. Now Acacia is in the fight of its life and may even face a shareholder revolt as a result.
Searching for sexual innuendos..... searching......
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
Don't EVER post a story about porn sites and end it with a link entitled "Check it out here" :(
You really got my hopes up
my other penis is a vagina
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.
I imagine they will feel insulted at being called a well heeled porn site.
"Acadia Research has sent hundreds of letters to various porn web sites ... picking on the small fry before trying to take on well-heeled companies such as Disney."
By 'various porn web sites' do you mean the single largest online industry and the driving force behind countless advancements of the internet over the years? I think it's safe to say that Acadia Research chose the wrong 'small fry' to pick on.
Make them watch twenty hours of Ron Jeremy, they'll buckle quicker than Asia Carerras panties come off
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.
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.
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