Acacia's fall?
 

Just seen this thread on GFY:

http://gofuckyourself.com/showthread...ghlight=acacia

Might be Acacia is going to fall over AT&T

seems to be good news, finally some good nes against accacia!

Acacia never claimed that they INVENTED streaming video ... :rolleyes:

The only thing they did was to purchase the patent. They had an over-zealous (probably aspiring and trying to make a name for themself) legal-type person, research various patents, and find that the patent for streaming video was not secured, so they bought it ... and now they are trying to profit from it ...

Is it unethical ??? Sure!
But is it illegal ??? HELL NO!

The exact same thing has been done many times before ... but just never on such a large scale.

Bottom line is, it will come down to who has the deeper pockets. Eventually somebody is going to run out of money fighting, or decide it is no longer financially viable, and when this happens, then we will know the outcome.

Acacia took a crapshot that 30 Million will be enough to fight off opposition, Only time will tell.

Isn't it like this:

That you can claim only a patent if your are inventor of a new technology?

In this case that would be AT&T and if AT&T didn't claim patent rights on it that actually other patents claiming to have made this invention would be invalid? Meaning the only way for Acacia to get rights on that patent would be to buy the rights from AT&T?

I believe that the way things work with patents/prior art is that you can only patent something if you are the first one to come up with an idea. If someone had the idea before you (and it is documented reliably), then it doesn't matter if they patented it or not. Not patenting something means that you can't stop other people from using what you invent. But it doesn't mean that someone else can patent it.

Of course I could be wrong.

how about the telephone?

no, you can buy the patent from the inventor of the new technology . . . of course, you had better be sure that the patent is valid before you buy it

Ya got a point there LB :(

At any rate ... we have not heard the end of Acacia just yet