Acacia Research signed its first Digital Media Transmission licensing agreement with a corporate Website, announcing a deal April 12 with T. Rowe Price, a global investment management firm headquartered in Baltimore, Md.
Acacia executive vice president Robert Berman told AVN.com the deal was finalized toward the end of the first full week of April, and that it was indeed the first such licensing deal the company had struck with a corporate Website.
"We hope it's the first of many [corporate licensing deals]," Berman said. "And what's interesting is that some people are under the misconception that only sites that are charging for content are subject to patent infringement. And that's not true. Sites that are providing streaming or on-demand [media content] for free are infringing just as much as sites charging for access."
The T. Rowe Price licensing deal is the 120th such deal Acacia has struck for its DMT patent group, the validity of which is being challenged by a number of adult Internet companies led by New Destiny/Homegrown Video and VideoSecrets.
NewDestiny/Homegrown chief Spike Goldberg told AVN.com it is "embarrassing that, after all this time, and all the infringers they're supposedly trying to sign, Acacia only has 120 licenses. But if you give someone a good deal, of course they're going to license."
VideoSecrets chief Greg Clayman said he isn't concerned about what Acacia has to say but what the judge hearing the adult Internet companies' challenge to the patent claims has to say. "I'm concerned with what the judge has to say about how and what we're infringing, if we are infringing, and what the claims really mean," he said, "and not what Acacia thinks they mean."
In that battle, the April 9 session in the so-called Markman process – a judge weighing evidence and definitions before determining patent claims as matters of law – touched upon matters including an invention's elements and sequencing. Acacia's legal team argued there is no strictly required sequencing of elements in order to validate an invention, while the challengers' legal team asserted those elements and their sequences are significant in assessing an invention's validity.
The Acacia Markman hearing will continue in a three-day session set for May 18-20, with two-day sessions also set for June 23-24 and July 7-8.
Representatives of T. Rowe Price's legal affairs department did not return a query for comment before this story went to press.
