Acacia Research's 170th Digital Media Transmission licensee is iFilm, an Internet entertainment destination whose investors include Eastman Kodak, Sony Pictures, Axion Ventures, Liberty Digital, Rainbow Media, and Vulcan Ventures.
iFilm describes itself as offering channels of movies, short films, television clips, video game trailers, music videos, and a collection known as Viral Videos, with distribution partners including RealNetworks, Movies.com, WindowsMedia.com, and Rotten Tomatoes.
The company was co-founded by Kevin Wendle, Luke McDonough, and Rodger Raderman. Wendle may have the highest profile of the three: He was one of the co-founders of CNET, where he worked for five years, and had previously been a co-founder of Fox Broadcasting Company. Raderman is still on iFilm's board but is now the co-founder and chairman of Obscura Digital, a content production company whose clientele includes Oracle, Vivendi Universal, CNET, and HarperCollins.
“Each month, iFilm is recognized as one of the top streaming companies on the Internet," said Acacia chief executive Paul Ryan announcing the DMT licensing deal. "We are pleased to have iFilm as a licensee because it further demonstrates the execution of our strategy to sign license agreements with all of the leading streaming companies."
The iFilm licensing deal came a week after Acacia signed DMT licensing deals with two companies – Seren Innovations and Boulder Ridge Cable – among nine sued by Acacia over the controversial streaming media patents, which are being challenged arduously by a number of adult Internet companies led by New Destiny/Homegrown Video and VS Media.
At around the same time, a three-judge panel of the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling that some television makers did not infringe a V-chip patent Acacia acquired when it acquired the patent's holder, SoundView Technologies.
The lower court had ruled that the setmakers could not be held liable under the so-called doctrine of equivalence – a patent law doctrine in which differences between the setmakers’ blocking devices and the SoundView device are proven insubstantial.
