Quote:
Originally posted by Splash
Or would they be required to sue everyone individually? I know you are not a lawyer, but it's just a question someone might be able to answer.
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Acacia can't file a class action lawsuit to sue people, but people who have been targeted by acacia for lawsuits can file together as a class action.
The advantage is you go in as a group, the disadvantage is if you lose the case for whatever reason, all the members of the group suffer the same outcome.
Another problem is finding an attorney that will take on the case.. most class actions involve alot of money for settlement, so plenty of lawyers come to the surface.
In this case, it's a pure defense, so that means paying an attorney to handle the class action... which is fine since all members could contribute money....
The 11 current defendants have pooled their money, but are individually going to court...so that there are many chances at bat.
I am expecting Acacia to be filing lots of lawsuits come December 1st...and use a lawsuit as a way of forcing a webmaster to settle, since they won't have the money to fight in court....
They are starting the groundwork i believe with the cold-calling (as i posted earlier).
Given the corrected way of reading the license, $3,000 at a minimum is alot of money to webmasters in the less than 50K bracket...so having people band together would certainly create a sizeable class-action pool where your ticket costs you atleast $3K.
It will be very interesting to see what happens in Dec.
Fight the Patent!