Awwww...shucks....I didn't know I had a fan.

I nominate you as the president of the Brown Bear fan club.

DUH, YES opening a offshore company would make these dickhead scam artists with there patents leave you alone, they are not some big ass company who is going to track you down, there just some piss ass scam artists trying to extract some cash from the porn biz. And other biz i'm sure.

Wake up and smell what your eating dude, opening a US company or changing your DNS WOULD solve this problem for most people. So dissing this guy for his post is pure bullshit, you need to go back to school.

Sammy

You do not MOVE but SELL to another corporation. And this other corporation is incorporated in an other Country. It's like when ARS sold their sites to Global in Toronto/Canada - and recently Global sold the sites to another corporation (AskCs Inc.) in the USA.

What I was saying is : If you are concern for whatever the reasons of being in the USA, well you can think about SELLING to another corporation in another Country where it will be more convenient for you and your corporation to do business in.

If you are curently in court and you want to move offshore to avoid paying royalties to a company like Acacia - well it might be too late.

:winkwink:

they are not some big ass company

No, but when they turn the IRS on you, and the Feds get to looking, most of the court litigation costs would be levied on your own head. If the govt wants to ever get after this industry, this sort of case would open the ball.

Read the case on Al Capone. Once the IRS gets involved EVERYone involved gets looked at.

Something I learned in the mid 80's, when an accountant tells you something, check with a criminal lawyer before trusting it. An accountant knows taxes (and laws to a degree involving them). Criminal action - law, civil as well, do not always agree with an accountants thoughts on a subject. Few accountants could ever handle being an attorney at the same time. There are just too many changes each year for any one person to be aware of AND remember.

Do as you wish, but when you err, it's better to be on the safer side of it.

Capone was in a cash business, we are not in a cash business but a very tracable business. Now if some fool doesnt pay his taxes thats not a adult internet thing, thats a person who is stupid thing. We pay all our taxes and I think it is safe to assume 97% of web masters in the US pay their taxes because there is no where to hide income. Its not like when I worked in adult entertainment in the strip bars there were gobs of cash and the owners could hide that. You cant hide ibill checks or cc money transfered into your account.

Why the IRS will be on you if you pay your tax in time? Selling assets from a company to another is fully legit. I don't see why the Feds will get involved in something like this - there is nothing illegal here if this "transition" is done within the rules and by informing the government.

Some country like Canada, you can legally MOVE things offshore if you pay a "departure tax". Anyway, consult your tax lawyer and accounting firm. Everything can be done legally, it's not costing a forture and it can saves tons of nightmares.

These guys are tyring to patent the idea of a content provider selling streams to a webmaster for the purpose of resale to end users. They are also trying to force webmasters that use video on their sites to pay royalties. It's definitely a case of extortion. Not to worry, if we all work together on this one, we should be able to keep these fuckers out of our industry.

ACACIA
A very important message to all webmasters:

A company called ACACIA is threatening our entire community, from content companies to amateur webmasters, with a lawsuit aimed at requiring anyone using online video, streams, server push, or downloads, to pay an exorbitant license fee. They are demanding that all companies pay them 15% of their online earnings!

In essence, they claim to own the patent for all digital video transmitted via the internet!

Many have been already served. A lot of us thought this problem would go away and considered it too ridiculous to even merit attention, but the sad truth is that this is a real problem that is now going to certainly be determined in court.

Already a movement is underway to challenge this assault of our industry and many companies and individuals are coming together to fight in a unified front and share the burden resulting from this action.

Please contact [email protected] or call, or have your attorney call Holio's attorney, Saul Reiss, at 310-360-8840. We will attempt to coordinate this effort on behalf of anyone who is faced with threats and or litigation from Acacia.

Please cut and paste this post and share it on other boards that you may frequent. Thank you.

Farrell Timlake

President, Homegrown Video
Office: 206-524-4540
cell: 206-391-6509

Here's the Acacia patent language I could find on the government's website.

I'm only guessing, but it looks like they've been filing the same patents since 1991, the latest in 2000, all with what seems to be the same language. To wit:

"A system of distributing video and/or audio information employs digital signal processing to achieve high rates of data compression. The compressed and encoded audio and/or video information is sent over standard telephone, cable or satellite broadcast channels to a receiver specified by a subscriber of the service, preferably in less than real time, for later playback and optional recording on standard audio and/or video tape."

Kinda weird since they've been filing the same patents for several years with apparently the same language. If I recall correctly, a patent usually only lasts for 7 years, so their first would have expired in 1998.

I guess that's why they've kept filing, although I wonder if that's allowed. It's also odd that they haven't attempted to make case until now.

I received a letter from them as well for my EU company, today actually.
Fuck'em, they arent getting shit from me.

As I had read earlier, if you are not building a competing technology how can they go after us? I am use technologies I bought licenses from Microsoft, Macromedia,Adobe, Pinnacle, if they want to sue for patent infringement thats who they should be going after. Its like the guy who owns the patent for digital imaging going after me because I take digital pictures. Also if they were smart they would of made the yearly license $100 a year, a large number would of paid and not said a word but greed is an awful thing. We have to take a goal line stand on this one, so others will think twice. Isnt it interesting that after the visa thing it seems they really started to make a push.Maybe after seeing how most are so willing to bendover, it gave them hope that they would win.

I cannot find the link at the moment but there is a similar tactic being used against small businesses using online stores. Some one claims the patent rights to ecommerce and is suing small guys, one at a time.

Found a link on Slash Dot

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?s...thread&tid=155


They have a website, very similar effort

http://www.youmaybenext.com/

I just chated with a freind of mine ,who knows this patent shit pretty well this was his response to me . "Anyway, the camera analogy is on point. They are claiming rights to an expressive work that has become fixed in a tangible medium of expression.That's as old as copyright law itself.And they are very clearly defined in the definitions. Well, they own "patents" But they are trying to claim copyright interest. No go, no fly, move to dismiss, bye bye. File a counterclaim for abusive litigation and even if they don't sue, file a claim for extortion."

THis is extortion... they are offering "low" licensing fees to those who sucumb to thier demands.. but in the fine print, they also want your customer lists and rights to audit your company... if they get enough "small" clients to agree.. they then use those company names as "proof" to the courts that they are legit...

WE are planning to band together and fight back... if you are a content provider and or webmaster who has gotten a letter from Acacia... and would like to join us... please e-mail

[email protected]


peace:thumbsup

sorry.. basically we would all split the costs for an attourney to represent us... so everyones costs would be much lower....

Acacia's 3rd quarter 10-Q:

$36 million in the red for the last 9 months , $136 million in losses for the history of the company.

Total revenues of $179,000 in 3rd Q 2002.

$57.8 million in cash/short term investments.

Yep. Might explain why they're coming after the adult industry after ten years of supposedly holding these patent rights.

well then i guess someone can go eat a dick then lol

Has anyone paid?

Jade

I wonder if living in a country that is not on their lists is any protection if the video we are providing is sitting on a server in a country that is on their lists.

i'm curious about this myself. regardless:

(1) i've received nothing yet (which seems pretty odd).
(2) i will not roll over on this if they do. no way.

good question...

I don't know for sure, but my understanding is that patent rights in the United States (much like trademark and copyright) extend to other countries ... mostly because of international treaties ...

So I'm not sure that even a server in another country, much less living in another country not on their lists, would help ...

I haven't heard of anyone in the adult industry paying.

But from what I understand (and this is strictly unsubstantiated rumor) ...

Their goal is to scare about 10 percent of the webmasters into paying ... and even if that small amount pays ... they're making money.

I've also heard that they have never won a lawsuit ... their success is mostly based upon scare tactics, not a real legal case.

I'd argue it would be a significant mistake for anyone to sign anything admitting infringment, much less allowing them near your accounting. Period. You may think that "cooperating" buys you peace of mind or is cheaper, but that's how they'll get their hooks in. They will then know that:

1) you respond financially to vague threats of legal action;

2) you are unlikely to cost them money by forcing them to assign attorney time to actually build and litigate a case;

3) you can safely go on the list of people to threaten again in about a year.

It'll be interesting to see how far this horseshit flies.

Their most recent lawsuit ended in a summary judgement for the defendants. It was the V-chip suit with the TV makers.

IMO the amounts that they are asking for make payment out of the question. Had they comes with a fee of a few hundred to a few thousand depending on company size they would have had a greater likelihood of success. It would have been like the VISA fee, very annoying but in the end a cost of doing business.

In the PANIP patent case, the first wave of defendants saw their settlement offers drop dramatically when they filed their first motions. Perhaps this will be a similar result, where Acacia will serve a select group, and then try to settle before litigation heats up. At some point if you are a named defendant there will be a threshold of pain that the plaintiff lawyers will be seeking to ascertain.

We are fortunate to have two in house attorneys for our company, so the litigation blow would be lessened should they target us, but for a smaller company they would likely be in a difficult situation where paying a few thousand to make this go away is the best choice.

I know one thing for a fact, Acacia will not likely see six figure royalty checks coming in the door before Dec 31st, they will have a fight from the larger program owners. Maybe they believe our industry is not well funded to withstand a protracted litigation. I just know a few hundred thousand royalty fee would seem to better spent retaining Holland and Knight for a 600 or so hours of work.

I just received their patent presentation package. Very impressive in the way they have the material presented. However, I've noticed 2 things about this. So far, they seem to only be targeting the adult market... and only sites they "think" will not have the resources to defend themselves if they choose not to respond to this royalty demand. So far, I haven't heard any representative of the larger programs confirm that they have received this notice as well, so I'll assume for now that they haven't.

Also, the invocation of these patent royalties seems to breach anti-trust laws and will probably get busted up by anti-trust lawyers after they try this same strong-arm tactics on some large mainstream industries. These guys received their latest patents only in July of this year, yet they're setting a deadline of Dec. 31st for people to start paying the royalties on these questionable patents or face legal recourse. Smells a bit like borderline blackmail to me. (Just my opinion). Seems like there are gaping holes in their case that someone could exploit if they chose to.

I'd like to hear what the larger companies are saying about this (if they even know yet).

For those that decide to not pay by the Dec. 31st deadline...

what do you think would be the worst case scenario and the best case scenario?

Jade

Jade, the scenerios would be rather obvious. Best case, nothing becomes of it and you continue on with biz as usual. Worst case, they wait a few months to tally up the contacts that they sent packages out to and follow up with patent infringement lawsuits (the validity of which would still be questionable considering patents of this broad nature never really have a good trackrecord for the plantiffs in court).

Considering there are quite possibly MILLIONS of websites serving video downloads or feeds, a patent of this kind is by nature obsurd, and impossible to fully enforce. Consider all of the "regular joes" who have videos on their home computer which are accessed by other regular joes through P2P platforms like KaZaa and Limewire. Thousands upon thousands of video clips are exchanged electronically over the net this way. Yet Acacia seems to want to primarily target adult websites as their guinnea pigs in this monopolization. The whole thing smells sour from start to finish.

I'm not paying and I'll fight them in court even if it costs me 10 times what their royalty payments are. I'm not opening up my financials for ANY company. They are just trying to extort money from the adult industry. They are targeting the smaller sites to build up a good track record and then they are gonna go after the bigger sites. They have no real reason to go after smaller sites because even if they do win, chances are they won't collect how much money they spent on the litigation.

All I can say to Acacia is...

GoFuckYourself :321GFY

If you receive one of these letters, I suggest that you do not ignore it! You should seek the advice of an attorney. It is true that a common tactic in situations such as this is to go after a bunch of little guys to develop a track-record and see what the likely defenses are to the claim before going after the big guys.

Only time will tell if the patent is enforceable. Also, you will want an attorney to evaluate the scope of the patents they are claiming have been infringed and compare that to what you do. It may be that your method of providing video is not a method within the scope of the patent.

:cool-as-a

We got our letter today. I was starting to feel left out...

Pretty fancy packaging too. Must have cost them a pretty penny.

Can some of the folks who posted here over the last couple of days (I think it was the homegrowncontent.com guy and one other) please give some sort of update as to what's happening with your coalition effort?

And has anyone who received the 'packet kit' contacted their content providers, to suss out what is going on from their end?

Has anyone actually taken the 'kit' to their lawyer? What was their response?

Sorry to activate this thread again, but it seems important to follow this thing through -- and have as much info as possible.

Someone should make a website to keep everyone updated on this.

I suggest www.fight-acacia.com or www.acaciasucks.com

Go register it and set it up with the ongoing happenings of this drama.

Here's a letter I got from Holio.net on this matter last week:

"It has come to our attention that a company known as Acacia Media has targeted our industry for patent infringement lawsuits based on a claim they have a patent on all video transmission which is user controlled. This type of intimidating litigation has become a new fad aimed at small internet businesses. (see youmaybenext.com) We are proposing to fight this practice with a unified defense using the same lawyers and experts. Holio's attorney Saul Reiss will attempt to coordinate this effort on behalf of anyone who is faced with threats and or litigation from Acacia. If you receive any such claim, please contact him at 310-360-8840. If you already have a lawyer handling this case, please have your attorney contact Mr. Reiss.

Holio.net "

I've got this package...
Shit!
Visa stole just $750 but Acacia try to get $1,500 - $170,000 from EACH webmaster! :mad:

It seems VideoSecrets and 10 others are still in litigation with Acacia. There were initially 39 defendants, 29 settled with Acacia. The article I got this information from is located:

http://www.avnonline.com/issues/2003...051403_3.shtml


Good luck guys.. We?re all in this together.

:321GFY