More patent madness

Anything and everything that's related to OGRE or the wider graphics field that doesn't fit into the other forums.
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paddy
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More patent madness

Post by paddy »

Has anyone dealt the "Acacia Technologies Group" directly before?

A client of mine got an email demanding he pay a license fee or stop using "their technology" for having downloadable video profiles on his small (currently free) dating website.

They buy patents and enforce them as a business model, and apparenly have been making large sums and winning court cases regarding their "universal" patent on all digital distributions of video or audio files.

Their patent from 1991 would be laughable if they weren't winning court cases and actually bullying people into their extortion:
A system of distributing video and/or audio information employs digital signal processing to achieve high rates of data compression. The compressed and encoded audio and/or video information is sent over standard telephone, cable or satellite broadcast channels to a receiver specified by a subscriber of the service, preferably in less than real time, for later playback and optional recording on standard audio and/or video tape.


patent link

Its not about any source code of theirs, any programming techniques or codec strategies or a single thing they actually did - and applies for everything from digital cable TV to digital telephone fiber optics to every website with a fraps video capture for download.

From what I read up on the guys, a few years back they started suing adult sites in 2003, since courts didn't like those businesses anyway and got some precedents set that were in their favor.

Now, it seems they are trying to extort respectable business owners too. They even have a policy that the longer you resist them, the higher your royalty fee will be to use "their" idea of transmitting video or audio online.

This client of mine has nothing to do with the adult industry and doesn't even draw an income on anything that uses video files. If it wasn't for all the links I found I would definately had thought this was an internet hoax.


Has anyone heard of these guys or if they've been challanged at all successfully? The practice is so sickening to me it makes me almost physically ill. They won't even try going after microsoft or apple quicktime apparently, because they don't want to be destroyed and think they can feed off the weaker companies. I still can barely believe it.

I am still in shock that these companies are allowed to exist and even profit from such horrible practices.

Does anyone know if they target companies who have their sites hosted in europe?

I've read a lot of patent threads here in these forums so I am curious what people may have heard.
Maleficus
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Post by Maleficus »

You might find this interesting:

http://www.eff.org/patent/wanted/

The company in question is #1.

Though I find the Goldberg patent to be particularly amusing :roll:
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sinbad
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Post by sinbad »

Parasitic wankers. Hooray for the law makers who play into the hands of people like this, and for the lawyers who feed off it when blood is in the water. Patents protect innovation! What a crock.
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Phantom
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Post by Phantom »

Shouldn't that patent have already expired? Don't patents last 14 years or so?
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Project5
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Post by Project5 »

20 years iirc for this sort of thing :-(

Microsoft's patent on computer opponents making strategic decisions makes me feel the same way, although the first x-com is some hot prior art there.

The Goldberg patent only affects people who want to make online card games, so they can be rejected out of hand most of the time. If not, the old games Subspace and AOL's Neverwinter Nights are good pieces of prior art, beating it by about three years.

As to Acacia's, I think he should call up the EFF and ask what to do. Only if people give in do they get the money to move onto someone else. If that means fighting legally, that sucks, but imo far better than giving them the resources to nail someone else. Otherwise, have him hit up the wayback machine and see what sort of prior art he can find.

--Ben
makeshiftwings
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Post by makeshiftwings »

That's it... I'm applying for a patent that involves "a system of distributing a series of violent kicks to the face of Acacia employees and lawyers that work for them." And then granting it to the public domain, of course.
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:wumpus:
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Post by :wumpus: »

I've already filed a patent for "an apparatus that converts patent lawyers into carbon based fuel that can provide an alternative for conventional oil sources". It may come in handy some day with the increasing number of patent lawyers and decreasing oil yields. Also, they can finally have the peace of mind that they fulfull a useful purpose in society.
Vectrex
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Post by Vectrex »

I submitted a bunch of WAY prior art to the EFF about the SEER systems music patent... which is NUTS that it was granted, but in 199*9*?! Intense.

Not as funny as the patented sandwich though :D, which smuckers actually bought off the guys and proceeded to make shit loads of cash and send C&D letters out to anyone trying to make one :twisted:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Pars ... PN/6004596
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Gaffeghan
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Post by Gaffeghan »

i don't usually get mixed up in rants such as this, but when i saw the patented sandwitch, i couldn't help but laugh

[rant]any retard and his dog knows how to make a friggin PB&J, and who the hell takes the time to patent this?? let alone the time to enforce it!? these people need to get lives! coming from me, that's a big slap in the face.
if these goons are serious about patent enforcement, i should be on death row for making so many pb&j sandwitches. and patenting digital media in general? who the hell let that one slip thru the cracks? that'd be like patenting air! patent lawers need lives, and need to stop sucking the life out of free enterprize and immagination in general[/rant]

short and to the point. patents, be thow for the people.
Vectrex
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Post by Vectrex »

well actually it's a SEALED CRUSTLESS pb&j sandwich which makes it totally different and 'novel' ;) :roll:
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bleeder
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Post by bleeder »

That's it - I'm patenting water, electricity and light...
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Gaffeghan
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Post by Gaffeghan »

still, now i'm banned from making the best pb&j ever w/o paying royalties... that's sick, i'm gonna go make a thousand of them and stash them away in my basement freezer!


patent darkness and dirt while your at it

[edit] too bad a good rant isn't enough to change the system.. always fun to try 8) [/edit]