Second Acacia Hearing On Friday

SANTA ANA, Calif. – The second Markman Hearing will be held tomorrow, April 9, at the Ronald Reagan Federal Building as the adult industry defense group goes up against Acacia Technology Group over the wording of a handful of Digital Media Technologies (DMT) patents that relate to streaming audio and video over the Internet.

The hearing will be overseen by the Honorable Judge James Ware, a U.S. District Court Judge for the Northern District of California, and will commence at 10 am.

The first Markman Hearing took place on Feb. 6 and began what promises to be a very long process of reviewing the meaning of each of Acacia's primary DMT patents.

The first hearing was scheduled to review four different claims within Acacia's U.S. patent collection but managed to only cover one claim over the course of four hours. Typically eight or more terms define each patent and an individual patent can theoretically include any number of claims, each being a 'separate invention.'

According to a patent attorney who attended the first hearing, Acacia's five U.S. patents consist of an estimated 121 claims. The company currently holds 36 patents worldwide.

There is some speculation from those close to the case that the process of examining the patents could take Judge Ware through the end of the summer to complete the first part of the hearing. In some cases, Markman Hearings can last as few as 3-4 days, a source told XBiz.

The adult industry defense group currently represents 13 adult industry defendants, including New Destiny Homegrown, Video Secrets, Club Jenna, CyberTrend, Cybernet Ventures, Global AVS (ProAdult), Lightspeed, ARS, Gamelink, Ademia, AEBN, Audio Communications, and National A-1.

Friday's hearing will be followed by three consecutive hearings in May. Dates will be announced as soon as Judge Ware, the plaintiffs and the defendants agree on a time.

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