Petteri Pyyny
17 Jul 2003 14:42
The streaming patents that a rather unknown company called Acacia Research holds, gained their first seal of approval by a Californian district court.
Acacia claims to own patents that cover virtually all core technologies that are used in providing streaming audio or video online. Company has sued several small companies, mostly adult entertainment companies, accusing them of using patented technology without valid licenses.
If Acacia's patents actually hold water once they start attacking major players on the Net, it would mean that virtually every single website that provides multimedia content in any form, would be liable of paying licensing fees to Acacia.
Court awarded Acacia a temporary injunction against five adult entertainment companies. The injunction bans the sites from using any streaming audio or video material on their websites and also bans them from linking to any site that provides such content.
The named five companies failed to defend themselves or show up in the court hearing, so the case isn't exactly the best possible case study to prove Acacia's patents perfectly valid.
According to Acacia, it is currently negotiating with bigges fishes, such as cable TV companies and other major corporations in order to get a licensing agreement with them -- and avoid litigation against major corporations that would have enough money to make their case a very, very expensive one.
Source: News.com