Acacia

The University of Tennessee received its letter from Acacia two weeks ago, and since then I've been gathering background information for our IT and Legal Counsel folks. Today I stumbled on this list of resources, prepared by WCET and posted to the DEOS-L list:

"The following resources have been selected to help collaboratively construct an understanding of the history, basis, and extent of Acacia's process patents on streaming audio and video."

I. Claims
Licensing request letter (typical) from Acacia to RadioIO
Publication: Letter from Acacia
Link: http://www.radioio.com/acacia.pdf
Legal battle between Acacia and Adult Entertainment industry
Publication: Clickz.com Website
Link: http://www.clickz.com/news/article.php/3309511
Information on the "Markman" (claim construction) Hearing
Publication: FightThePatent.com
Link: http://www.fightthepatent.com/v2/PreMarkman.html
Legal battle between Acacia and Hotel On-Demand Video
Publication: Yahoo!Finance
Link: http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/040607/75767_1.html
Legal battle between Acacia and Cable and Satellite TV
Publication: MSNBC News
Link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5218894/
II. History
History of Acacia: patent-buying behavior, bankrupt ventures
Publication: StreamingMedia.com Website
Link: http://www.streamingmedia.com/patent/about.asp
Acacia patent-gathering history, financing history and claims
Publication: CNET News.com Website
Link: http://news.com.com/2100-1023-983552.html
History of, value of, and issues with internet patents
Publication: Information Week
Link: http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK20021212S0010
III. Invalidity
All about Claim Construction/Markman Hearings
Publication: National Law Journal
Link: http://www.howrey.com/practices/ip/index.cfm?contentID=288
Bar code industry wins case against Lemelson: A great parallel to the Acacia Saga with a happy ending
Publication: Frontline Solutions
Link: http://www.frontlinetoday.com/frontline/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=83111
Reference to a bibliography of sources that clearly document the prior existence of technologies claimed to be patented by Acacia; describes the technical invalidity of a patent that claims ownership of "prior art"
Publication: Network World Fusion
Link: http://napps.nwfusion.com/weblogs/multimedia/archives/002088.html
Searchable database of invalid patents + explanation of why bad patents get through the patent office
Publication: Bad Patents Website
Link: http://www.bustpatents.com/
IV. Other Resources
Negotiation of license agreement with eCollege customers
Publication: eCollege Press Release
Link: http://www.ecollege.com/stories/press_05_21_04.learn?page=2200
Acacia Technologies Group company profile
Publication: Yahoo! Finance
Link: http://biz.yahoo.com/ic/107/107151.html
A daily weblog detailing the progress of the Acacia issue
Publication: FightThePatent.com Website
Link: http://www.fightthepatent.com/
A list of resources on the Acacia patent issue
Publication: IMPAI (adult entertainment industry association) Website
Link: http://impai.org/onlineindustry.html
Posted by Chris Hodge at August 19, 2004 02:52 PM | Links to this post
Categories: AudioVideo-over-IP