Acacia Update: Busy Little Bees
It’s been a month since our last 金合欢更新, and Acacia has been anything but idle over that span of time. After the public outcry over their second wave of licensing-offer letters mailed to colleges and universities, 相思已发出一片 经修订的发牌服务. According to an eSchool 新闻 Online news piece entitled "Acacia revises royalty demands", Acacia’s original agreement demands a minimum payment of $5,000 from any school that uses streaming video and audio. 的 new offer reduces that annual minimum fee to $1,000, with two choices of fee structure: Schools can either pay $2 for each distance-education enrollment or seven cents per audio or video download/stream.
9月13日， 金合欢宣布 "that its Acacia Media Technologies Corporation subsidiary has initiated patent infringement litigation against cable companies located in Arizona, 明尼苏达州, 和俄亥俄州." Acacia has had some success in leveraging litigation to convince cable companies to sign licensing agreements. 今年6月, Acacia filed a patent infringement litigation suit against six cable companies in the Northern District of California. Three have already settled and signed licensing agreements.
关于 a week earlier, on September 7th, 金合欢宣布 that it had entered into a license agreement with Bloomberg LP, one of the world’s largest media organizations. 的 agreement covers all non-live streaming audio and video content accessed via 的 Bloomberg Professional service. Details of the agreement have not been released, but history has demonstrated Acacia’s willingness to offer "sweetheart" deals to larger companies, like the Disney Enterprises Inc. and Radio 免费的 Virgin, the online music division of the Virgin Corporation. According to an article earlier this year at a ExtremeTech.com, "Licensees making over $10 million per year, 然而, have been asked to contact Acacia for ‘special terms’." Bloomberg’s license is the 175th that Acacia has entered into for its DMT technology.
Two weeks earlier, Acacia signed iFilm Corp. 牌照号码为170. iFilm has a distribution partnership with RealNetworks, Movie.com, WindowsMedia.和RottenTomatoes.com, 并提供流媒体电影, 影视短片, and music videos to more than 20 million visitors monthly. StreamingMedia.com asked iFilm to comment on their decision, but they declined to submit an on-the-record statement. 有趣的是, Acacia isn’t the only company going after online movie sites while laying claim to a Video-on-Demand patent. 2003年4月10日， USA Video Technology Corporation filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Movielink, a Hollywood studio-backed IP VoD provider. 的 Interactive TV Today newsletter quoted USA Video patent counsel Andrew Huffman as saying that the primary difference between their claims and Acacia’s is that "Acacia’s patents also describe an audio transmission implementation," while USA Video’s patent is "directly for video content." Huffman goes on to claim that while USA Video doesn’t consider Acacia an adversary, his company actually developed the technology that it patented—unlike Acacia—and that their patents predate Acacia’s. How this might play out in the future has yet to be seen, especially since USA Video is still in litigation with Movielink.
Acacia’s ongoing trial against a feisty group of adult entertainment companies will stay on hold until October 13th. That’s when the court will begin hearings to determine whether or not to heed Acacia’s class action proposal against all adult entertainment Web sites. 如果Acacia赢了这场听证会, they’ll be allowed to bring patent infringement claims against all adult entertainment companies in a single lawsuit. On December 2nd, the judge will begin hearing a motion for summary judgement made by the defendants. This summary judgement comes as a result of an earlier ruling during the trial’s Markman Hearings. You can read more about these results in this StreamingMedia.com的文章.