Quote:
Originally posted by berg.the.red
the big question is: is acacia's "encouraging infringement" claim valid ? certain legal precidents appear to blow their linking arguement out of the water. and these are the same folks who i've already read a post by a pay site owner who leases content being sent an acacia extortion letter. assuming ( for the sake of arguement ) the content provider has already signed a license agreement --acacia is getting 2% of the gross revenues from the streaming of that content. now acacia is looking to extort a license fee from the site leasing the stream. the fee paid by the site owner ( revenue to the provider ) is already figured in to the stream providers 2%. but now they want another 2% from the site owner because they're using the streaming feeds. double dipping. which berman in at least one archived interview session has said is ... illegal.
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The legal precedents I have seen presented in the forums have nothing to do with Patent law they deal with a linking case where the person doing the linking wasn?t making any money on the deal.
Here is a discussion of a linking case that is more comparable
http://packetstorm.linuxsecurity.com...00-lessons.htm
And an important thing to keep in mind if you are going to fight the claim on the merits you need enough funds in the bank for transportation and accommodations to and from California and money to retain a patent attorney. Now even if you win on the merits you don?t get all of that money back you just get to keep on doing what you were doing before. On the double dipping argument, my understanding is that not that many sponsors have settled. So if they are going after you for your links to sponsors that haven?t settled they haven?t even single dipped yet as to that income stream.