Despite adult industry’s hurrahs after a judge sided with the Internet companies against Acacia in his “Markman” decisions, they still face an uphill battle. The fact is only 614 of the nearly 7 million existing patents have been revoked, and 3,927 patents have been narrowed since re-examinations in 1981.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation took aim Wednesday at a cluster of what it believes are questionable patents, including adult industry foe Acacia Media Technologies. "Crimes against the public domain, willful ignorance of prior art, and egregious display of obviousness," are all words the San Francisco-based civil liberties organization is using.
Attempting to put the brakes on patents that are overly broad, the Electronic Frontier Foundation said it will ramp up efforts to have the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office re-examine some patents. Meanwhile, a patent case against adult webmasters continues next week in U.S. District Court.
Acacia has secured 14 additional DMT patents that cover a wider swath of Europe, including the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, and the Netherlands
As you can tell by reading the news and this website, there is a new way to make money. Forget about making a product that people will buy and use. Forget about inventing gadgets and devices
With all the industry banter lately over the validity of Acacia's DMT patents, in a likeminded move this week, the Federal Trade Commission put forth a proposal that could make patents harder to obtain and easier to challenge
In Part 1 of this article, Brandon examined the fundamental issues behind Acacia’s patent claims, and how they affect our industry. But is there nothing at all that adult Webmasters can do to fight Acacia’s patent claims? Or should we just pull out our checkbooks?
In a recent AVN poll, 80% of the responding webmasters don’t care or even know about the Acacia patent issue. For those of you that have not been following the news or message boards, Brandon will present a summary of the issues and some possible actions
