I don't know all the details of acacias claims, but in 1990, its doubtful that many in the public had even heard of email, the "web" consisted of gopher and lynx with no w3c extablished yet, ncsa mosaic was still a twinkle in Andresen's eye, and video streaming was NOT public domain.
Furthermore, a "specific technology implementation" is absolutely not necessary for it to be a valid technology or business process patent.
Finally, as far as "you may as well patent radio communication", guess what:
over 4,100 patents issued to 66 radio pioneers, in radio and television between 1830 to 1980...
Everything is new technology at one point... thats why people spend 100s of thousands of dollars to get patents.
But what the fuck do I know?
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Acacia Research software patent claim for streaming media
United States Patent No. 5,130,792 covers, among other things, Store-and-Forward video and was filed in February 1990 and issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office on July 14, 1992. The patent is a pioneering patent in the field of video-on-demand and Internet video with little prior art and has been cited by over 185 subsequent patents. In 1999, USA Video Interactive was awarded similar patents in England, France, Spain, Italy, Germany and Canada, and has patents pending in Japan.
Claim 1 of the patent is the principal claim covering the services and products of many electronic video distribution enterprises. This claim describes a system or process for electronically transmitting video programs to remote locations over switched networks and comprises the following components: i) a central data facility with stored digital compressed versions of video programs; ii) a request interface that receives requests for video programs from remote locations over the network and communicates them to the central data facility; iii) a distribution interface that initiates connections with remote locations over the network in response to requests received by the request interface, then transmits the compressed versions of video programs from the central data facility; and iv) a receiver at the remote location for receiving, storing, and playing the video programs in real time on a video display.
The video distribution models covered by the scope of the patent include:
a.. Video delivery directly from a central server facility using the Internet or other connectivity medium.
b.. Video delivery whereby the video is first downloaded from a central server to any intermediate device, such as an edge server or a cache server installed on a local area network, and then distributed.
c.. Video downloads to any end-user digital storage devices for later access, such as digital media recorders, set-top boxes, or computer hard drives.
Analyses of the patent and its file wrapper have validated its applicability to many video distribution models being employed today.