How many people got this letter?

Isn't extortion illegal?

This is funny. We had this same type of extortion bullshit early in the 900 business. In the beginning, we had 2 of the first 900 numbers. Back then there wasn't live 1-on-1 yet so our phone sex programs were all recordings being broadcast. We had a big full page ad in Hustler, featuring a big name porn star, which naturally drew us into the limelight.

One day we get this fucked up letter from an attorney claiming to represent the patent holder for recorded voice messages and demanding we pay him a royalty for every caller that listened to a phone sex message. We were doing about 50,000 calls a day, (back in those days it was cheap at .50 cents first min and .35 for each additional min,). We had our attorney look into it and indeed there was this guy who had obtained a patent for any type of phone answering style message recorded on tape. We did some more digging and discovered this guy was trying to extort money form every big company with a voice mail system and the telco's and anyone else they could come up with.

Long story short we told the guy to GFY and never heard a peep out of him again, though he did continue on his crusade and did find some sucker companies that paid him thinking he would actually go forward with a lawsuit.

In this case the guy had just started to enforce his patent, which was one of those obviously vastly too wide ones, and he didn't have the resources yet to actually file suits. In this movie case though it would be best to have your attorney respond, since it sounds like these guys have $ behind them and they can fuck with you just for the fun of it.

I got the letter today too. It specifically mentioned adult websites are being targeted in the letter. I am not a content provider or paysite but I do have movie clips that I submit to tgps. They claim to have patents us and international "which cover the transmission and receipt of digital audio and/or video content via various means, including the internet." ....'you must return the signed License Agreements and initial royalty payment to Acacia by December 31, 2002"

Section 3.1 states that royalties are based on your gross sales
$1 to 50,000 owe 1,500
50,0001 to 100,000 owe 3,000
100,001 to 250,000 owe 5,000
250,001 to 500,000 owe 10,000
500,001 to 1,000,000 owe 20,000
etc. it doubles each time after that.


Does this mean every single webmaster who offers any type of movie clips are going to have to pay this company? How can they possibly have a patent on something so general? More than %75 of websites adult or not have some sort of downloadable audio/video file. Are they going to sue all these websites? OR are they just going to go after adult webmasters because no one will care if pornographers have to pay some extra fees.

so, is anyone actually paying these cockholsters, currently?

I got the letter 2 months ago and a phone call demanding money 3 weeks ago, I told the guy to fuck off he said ok we will list you in our suit. I again told him to fuck off and told him I guess he will see me and Mr Gates in court.

I know 2 dozen webmasters that got that letter. What company uses telemarketing to get payment for something you know nothing about?

They may hold certain patents but Microsoft, Real and Apple would have to be primary targets, not the guys streaming but the codecs used to stream.

They will go after small guys first - they would be mad to sue Microsoft straight up.

Although they may find companies like Mircrosoft and Real applying for leave to join the action even if they arent named initially if it looks like any cases will create precedent they dont like.

There financials are interesting - they lost $36mil in the 9 months to September 30.

American patent law is a complete mess.

I got this email tonight...

============= start ===============

"......Suem, Skruem and Chargem LLC owns a portfolio of patents dating back to the time of the primordial sea and the beginning of life covering various segments of the human genome including those determined to be key influence factors in human intelligence and entrepreneurial spirit. It has recently come to our attention that you are a successful webmaster and businessman, and therefore no doubt utilizing technology covered by our patents. Our patents include U.S. patent Nos. 5,212,212; 5,864,344; 7,220,185; and an open continuation (evolution, you know).

Suem, Skruem and Chargem develops patents covering the human genome, and we have significant experience in licensing these technologies and enforcing patents. We request that you immediately contact your patent lawyer (and doctor) and examine your current and future genetic capabilities relative to this patent portfolio. Suem, Skruem and Chargem is prepared to license these patents on reasonable terms to you based on Schedule 1 attached, and we would like to schedule a meeting with you to discuss a license. I look forward to your prompt reply.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Juan Beeg Goke

ps. Are your eyes blue by chance? We own that one too.

Schedule 1:

Royalties based on your IQ

up to 100; owe nothing
100 to 120; owe $1,500 per annum
121 to 140; owe $3,000 per annum
140 to 170; owe $5,000 per annum
170+; owe $10,000 per annum

===================== end =============

The sad thing is, I'm sure Mr. Berman would try to patent those if he could. Bastards!

I followed this develeopment for years now. In Germany those cases are most perverted. There are lawyers that send 'Abmahnungen' letters that tell other businesses that they do something wrong. The letter itself qualifies the lawyer to ask for fees for the letter for the recipient. Some case to show you how perverted the law is here.

A computer store puts advertisement in their window for a computer that runs windows and has 'Internet Explorer' as browser preinstalled. He gets that letter because 'Explorer' is a computer related trademark of a dutch company. Now the lawyer sending this letter is in no way affiliated to that company and just want to earn the fees.

So Germany started a consumer help service to protect you from people like this.

Another case is a 16 year old kid who owns the domain hpworld.de using it to show how to make HomePages. Of course Hewlet Packard sends the threatening letter and the lawyers ask 1000 + in fees from a 16 year old just doing something non comercial and using an short with 2 letters.

This shit has to stop. Trademark is fine if you spend millions on the developing on something but just taking general techniques and do a trademark without any developing is just shit and the courts have already ruled that those patents are just invalid due to prior usage of such techniques.

Someone said they don't have a patent on this in Canada, what other countries do they not have a patent in?

Have they actually gone to court against any company yet?

Australia's in the clear.

Acacia Media Technologies owns U.S. and International pioneering patents covering the transmission and receipt of digital audio and/or video content via several means including the Internet, cable and satellite. This technology is called Digital Media Transmission ("DMT") Technology and is also commonly referred to as video-on-demand and audio-on-demand.
The worldwide patent portfolio includes five issued U.S. patents and a pending U.S. patent, which will provide coverage until 2011. The U.S. patents include: U.S. Patent No. 5,132,992, U.S. Patent No. 5,253,275, U.S. Patent No. 5,550,863, U.S. Patent No. 6,002,720, and U.S. Patent No. 6,144,702.

The European Patent Office has granted patents which provide coverage until 2012 in the following 14 countries: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Monaco, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

International patents have been issued covering Mexico, Taiwan, and Japan.


they must be tripping.. this garbage from a company called "acacia" and patents on "DMT".

no Canada. cool.

We got the letter about 3 months ago if not longer.
You all know by now basically what it said, only mine had 23 patent violations...i got on the phone right away and talked with the company president.

I set-up a login for the guy and guided him thru the site, showed him everything.
I cut him down in every try to uphold their fucking patents, in the end he was more confused then a blond at a science convention.

I then gave him 2 days to get back to us.
When he got back i only had 5 patent violations.
I called him back, asking why and explained to him how streaming/video on demand and so on works....

After this i havent heard a word!!
(i might, but havent yet)

This tells me that they dont know enough about this (yet) to really do something about it.
But one thing is for sure, just sitting back doing nothing wont help any one of us.

If they continue ill just zip the video previews and let our clients download them till this is solved....

This is just another good reason to be an offshore company.

Well, that might work for now as long as you buy a zip program or find one for free which you can use commerically.

I dont beleive this will solve anything because some fucker is going to get the patent on the "Download/upload" technology used on the internet, regardless of the protocol used..then what, pay for each file downloaded downloaded off your site? 40 images on your tour = 40 downloads.

I think if/when these guys ever become a large threat to any content provider/site owners that maybe we should stick together and fuck them up.

Seems like the impact would affect absolutely everyone.

just my 2cents worth.

If all you are doing is putting an MPEG file on a server, how is that streaming?

Surfers are the one streaming it.

How is putting a file on a server infringing on a patent?

Acacia prices on the content provider license agreement.

Initial prepaid royalty:
Projected gross sales Initial prepaid royalty:
$1 - 100,000 $ 1,500,-
$100,001 - 500,000 $ 6,000,-
etc etc etc

Aditional royalty:
Actual gross sales Additional royalty:
$100,001 - 500,000 $ 8,100,-
$500,001 - 1,000,000 $ 20,250,-
etc etc etc

If you are the one offering the vids for streaming.

I think it will be a cold day in hell before they get anywhere with this, but if they do prices on videos will skyrocket.

So yes i do think its in everyones interest to get this solved one way or the other.

Data is coming off your server, you're the one broadcasting it not the user. Streaming/Downloading are pretty much the same (more or less), the client is merely accepting the stream of data (video) off your server.

It would be like that porno company who tried to patent the affil program :)

It'll be a cold day in hell before they would ever get a dime out of me. upto 8% of gross sales to these fuckers for absolutely nothing, i dont think so.


let me know how it goes. if you run into any problems let me know as i would be interested in helping to fight it :)

Joe

I received 2 letters about 6 weeks ago and I called them. What they are doing is sending out thousands of these letters in the hope that a site is actualy streaming video which I wasn't. I told them my videos are in a zip format and the webmasters download it so it's not streaming video.

He then told me if that's the case he also owns the copyright for that which is bullshit. I haven't heard from them since and that was 6 weeks ago.


If there patents could stand up in court then they would be after Microsoft but they know the costs would be to high and they would loose. The easiest is to scare the smaller Companies into paying and when they have built up their cash cow they will try and go for the bigger ones. IMHO.

We received the same kind of letter from another company named PANIP ... I'll never answered them until I get a court order.

But read this you'll learn a lot about all those scam
http://www.youmaybenext.com/

Solution #1:

Change your DNS contact info to a Canadian P.O. Box (or any other country not on their patent list).

They will probably assume you're a Canadian company and just go on to the next victim.

It's not a bulletproof solution, but it's cheap and easy and it sounds like this company doesn't do too much research into who it goes after anyways.


Solution #2:

Register an offshore company in a country not on their patent list, then tell them to go fuck a donkey!

I'm in Australia and we aren't on their patented list of countries and I received a letter from them.

Sounds like they're hoping you don't know your country isn't on their list.

This is very interesting. This Patent scam is an industry and unles one of the big boys gets involved it will just go on and on.

Read this.

http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK20021004S0040

I found it off a link on www.youmaybenext.com

Read it it's very interesting.

I'm going to patent the process of posting messages to a message board, then all you guys will have to pay ME for every post you make. Amp and boneprone are fucked. I will milk you guys like the tits on a goat!

Muahahhahahah! :1orglaugh :Graucho :1orglaugh

Solution #1:

Change your DNS contact info to a Canadian P.O. Box (or any other country not on their patent list).

They will probably assume you're a Canadian company and just go on to the next victim.

It's not a bulletproof solution, but it's cheap and easy and it sounds like this company doesn't do too much research into who it goes after anyways.


Solution #2:

Register an offshore company in a country not on their patent list, then tell them to go fuck a donkey!

You live up to your nick BB, you have the IQ of a bear. When they slam that door shut in the steel bar hotel, remember the sage advice you give on everything.

A US citizen cannot escape law by moving things to a different address, country or your seemingly favorite suggestion, Offshore.
You're just full of bullshit. What are you doing out of school? Don't they still have truent officers?

If you have some concerns, just open a offshore IBC for $1,500 and make a contract between this offshore company and a company in your country of residence. Put all the porn stuff under that offshore IBC and you should be fine.

Sign contracts between the 2 companies, so your company in USA will pay all payables and move the profit (less a little profit margin) to your IBC in an offshore account in UK and that's it!

Did you miss the part where I said this:

Did you even read my post? Obviously not.

You sure can if you do it the right way. Contact consultants like KPMG and they will teach you how do to it in accordance of the law.

Watch out, G-D might say you're just full of bullshit. :1orglaugh

I really dont hope anyone have paid them!

First, most people working in porn have a registered corporation, they don't operate their business out of their personal bank account (unless they're a newbie like you).

Second, the corporation would get sued, not the citizens who own or run the corporation. So a US citizen could own a Canadian corporation (or a corporation in any other country in which their patent doesn't apply in) and probably avoid legal action from them.

Yes I read the post BB, as well as alot of other ones from you. I will admit you amended this one to say not bullet proof.

Insofar as legally transferring offshore, better check on the little rider they have on such things. I'm not sure of the exact wording but it goes something like this...

If you are moving offshore to ESCAPE for illegal purposes, IE: income tax evasion or to escape legalities that would be brought against you... Bang.

I think that shifting offshore in most of these threads are just for the two things above. Band together and fight it but don't try to outrun it. That will go against you in court, if and when they take you there.

I believe Canada also follows along... (accepts US patents as their own)... with the patents in most of cases on the US's coattails. Or so I read some years ago. Might want to check on that now. Run and it just hurts when they catch you. John Walsh is always looking. :D

You know we talked about this when Visa happened and now this is happening. We have to start, a group pay dues get a lawyer to represent that group and when shit like this happens we can deal with it much more effectively. Also if you get 500 webmasters pay dues of $250 each thats $100k for lawyers. That is a nice chunk of money, most will think twice before fucking with us. We have to start acting like real businesses not toy ones. Real industries have trade asociations and guilds to protect them selves. Dont we all work too fucking hard to give our money way to every cocksucker that sees us as sheep.