Profiting From A Vague Patent HOWTO 309
tunabomber writes "IEEE Spectrum has an in-depth article about the rise of Acacia Research Corporation and its plan for enforcing its patent on 'Digital Media Technology' (which seems to lay claim to any technology that transmits audio or video digitally for entertainment purposes). You may recall that there was a story on Slashdot over a year ago about Acacia's threats and subsequent lawsuits against some small adult entertainment companies regarding their violation of the patent. There was also an Ask Slashdot posted a while back by the owner of one of these companies who had received a letter from Acacia Research demanding that they pay licensing fees. Both Slashdot stories asked how long it would be until Acacia went after the big media companies. Well, they finally did last week. It appears that Acacia just had to get enough companies (Disney and Virgin Radio, among others) to pay licensing fees before they could afford a legal adventure against the big guys. DirectTV, Comcast, Echostar, and Charter Communications are some of the defendents. Let the fireworks begin!"
I doubt it's as bad as it sounds... (Score:3, Informative)
I can't find the actual text of the patent. I tried searching the patent search engine dealy linked to in the original article, but I couldn't find it. Could someone link to it?
And the reason they call it a patent of a HOWTO is because I do not believe Acacia Research Corporation has actually implemented the streaming video stuff that they patented. I don't think it's as broad as it sounds, but it does sound a lot like patenting an idea.
Re:Prior art (Score:5, Informative)
So you need to see if the first ever digtially transmitted compressed audio or video file predates this patent.
I suspect it does. There must have been countless zipped audio samples on bulletin boards by 1992.
Re:When the patent is ruled invalid... (Score:5, Informative)
No, the people who would lose are the ones who settle. Since they didn't fight it, they basically said "here is free money, stop annoying me." Most settlements don't include agreements about if this patent should "go away." Though frankly, I would want to make sure my lawyer worked like hell to get it in.
Now I'm curious. Disney's lawyers are as infamous (or infamouse) as IBM's. What are they doing settling out of court for an iffy patent?
Legitimate reason for vague patents (Score:2, Informative)
The lawyers convinced us that filing the patent is the only way to prevent someone else from filing a patent, covering your technology, and then suing you, forcing you to PROVE to a court (always a chancy thing) that you had created prior art. And quite frankly every innovation we made to our online calendar showed up 3 months later in someone elses calendar. In fact we even found instances where people had literally cut and pasted our code, comments and all!
So we knew that there were unscrupulous bastards out there, willing to completely rip us off. So bearing that in mind, we agreed to file for patents, not so much to enforce them, but to protect ourselves from future suits. I agree, if the system was healthy and working, we wouldn't need to have done that, but the system is already full of sharks -- I don't blame people for getting shark repellant. Applying for the patent HAS to be done nowadays. Enforcing the patents is when I start to get mad. I know it's a fine line, but scruples and business operate in different realities.
Typical strategy (Score:3, Informative)
I'm sure the money you make doesn't hurt, of course. I mean, the big boys are going to make you pay a lot more in legal fees (more paperwork for your lawyers, more back and forth motions prior to the case, etc).
I agree with the other posters, though. We really need a better patent system because the current one is just getting abused.
Re:With lawsuits being the "In-Thing" (Score:1, Informative)
Status: False.
Origins: No,
Al Gore did not claim he "invented" the Internet, nor did he say anything that could reasonably be interpreted that way. The derisive "Al Gore said he 'invented' the Internet" put-downs are misleading distortions of something he said (taken out of context) during an interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN's "Late Edition" program on 9 March 1999. When asked to describe what distinguished him from his challenger for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey, Gore replied (in part):
During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.
Clearly, although Gore's phrasing was clumsy (and self-serving), he was not claiming that he "invented" the Internet (in the sense of having designed or implemented it), but that he was responsible for helping to create I also invented the microphone the environment (in an economic and legislative sense) that fostered the development of the Internet. Al Gore might not know nearly as much about the Internet and other technologies as his image would have us believe, and he certainly has been guilty of stretching (if not outright breaking) the truth before, but to believe that Gore seriously thought he could take credit for the "invention" of the Internet -- in the sense offered by the media -- is just silly. (To those who say the words "create" and "invent" mean the same thing: If they mean the same thing, then why have the media overwhelmingly and consistently cited Gore as having claimed he "invented" the Internet when he never used that word? The answer is that the words don't mean the same thing, but by substituting one word for the other, commentators can make Gore's claim sound [more] ridiculous.)
However, validating even the lesser claim Gore intended to make is problematic. Any statement about the "creation" or "beginning" of the Internet is difficult to evaluate, because the Internet is not a homogenous entity (it's a collection of computers, networks, protocols, standards, and application programs), nor did it all spring into being at once (the components that comprise the Internet were developed in various places at different times and are continuously being modified, improved, and expanded). Despite a spirited defense of Gore's claim by Vint Cerf (often referred to as the "father of the Internet") in which he stated "that as a Senator and now as Vice President, Gore has made it a point to be as well-informed as possible on technology and issues that surround it," many of the components of today's Internet came into being well before Gore's first term in Congress began in 1977, and it's hard to find any specific action of Gore's (such as his sponsoring a Congressional bill or championing a particular piece of legislation) that one could claim helped bring the Internet into being, much less validate Gore's statement of having taken the "initiative in creating the Internet."
It's true that Gore was popularizing the term "information superhighway" in the early 1990s (when few people outside academia or the computer/defense industries had heard of the Internet) and has introduced a few bills dealing with education and the Internet, but even though Congressman, Senator, and Vice-President Gore may always have been interested in and well-informed about information technology issues, that's a far cry from having taken an active, vital leadership role in bringing about those technologies. Even if Al Gore had never entered the political arena, we'd probably still be reading web pages via the Internet today.
Last updated: 27 September 2000
The URL for this page is http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.htm
Re:Prior art (Score:2, Informative)
Were they compressed, stored, transmitted and then decompressed? And were they audioand/or video files? Looks like this is what's needed.
Compression: Glyps are compressed using ascii codes
Decompressed: Ascii-byte-codes decompress to glyps.
Video/Audio: Some ascii-art has animation and beeps.
Re:With lawsuits being the "In-Thing" (Score:4, Informative)
This might be a bit off-topic, but my curiousity is piqued.
Where exactly can I find a reliable source that quotes Al Gore as having said that he invented the internet?
I mean, I read that, in 1999, he stated in an interview, "'During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the internet," by which he meant securing funding for it, but nowhere have I found, outside of message board posts, that Al Gore actually claimed to have invented the internet itself.
I read that he told a House committee about the internet in 1989, remarking, "I genuinely believe that the creation of this nationwide network will create an environment where work stations are common in homes and even small businesses." Geez, what a crackpot!
Re:dumb and obvious Q for the IANAL among us... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:"some small adult entertainment companies" (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Prior art (Score:5, Informative)
Unless my memory is failing me, that was in the mid-80's. And one of the main distribution media for those files were BBS's... Can Mr. Rogers say 'prior art'?
Prior art is mentioned in the patent! (Score:3, Informative)
They gave a list of 9 instances of prior art, right in the patent! Any time you stream media, this patent covers it. So, for instance, the telephone (invented 1876), the television (patented 1948), and "computer channels" (Z3 built in 1941) all operate primarily (exclusively!) by the means described in this patent.
Inconceivable!
Still, it should make the defense a little easier when Acacia has been nice enough to catalogue prior art for us! It's like shooting wealthy, very well-defended ducks in a barrel.
Don't forget to reach out and touch someone! (Score:3, Informative)
Rob Stewart, 949-480-8300
Fax: 949-480-8301
Re:Prior art (Score:2, Informative)
Bob Bemer, at IBM, foresaw eventual computer involvement in communication. In 1960 July he described a communication method using computers at both ends, the originator compressing the text, the receiver reconstituting it.
So, it looks like we have prior art from 44 years ago!