Acacia Media Technologies says November 30 will be their deadline for offering waviers for past due royalty and fee claims over its streaming media patent claims, and for raising their royalty rate on the patents.
But the company has also changed two provisions to its licensing agreement, said vice president and general counsel Robert Berman: they removed requiring licensees to turn over customer names, and they emphasized that if the patent claims are found invalid or unenforceable, royalties or fees no longer have to be paid.
Berman was careful to describe the November 30 deadline not as an ultimatum but a change in policy. Four days earlier, he told AVN.com that the offer of waivers for claimed past due royalties and fees was going to expire, but hadn't yet announced an actual deadline.
"We've given people plenty of time," Berman said September 26. "We've been frankly very successful with our introductory rates, and we think we've given people adequate time and adequate information to make a decision. We're going to be sending out individual notices to that effect as well." Those notices, he said, were likely to begin going out in the next few weeks.
Berman said removing the requirement for customer names and clarifying the unenforceability or invalidation provision were two among several licensing agreement changes Acacia agreed to make after a number of discussions with licensees and their attorneys.
"We took all the comments we got from (our) licensees and their attorneys," Berman said, "and we took out a lot of things people thought were objectionable. And people should go to look at those agreements on our Website and look at them carefully, and then decide what they want to do."
Earlier this week, New Destiny/Homegrown Video filed a countersuit charging Acacia with unfair trade practices and abuse of the judicial system, accusing Acacia of making "knowingly false and/or misleading statements about the systems and methods covered by its patents," and of intent to threaten, harass, "and intimidate" those adult Internet companies it accused of patent infringement or which challenged or discussed challenging Acacia's patent claims.
That countered Acacia's summertime filing of amended complaints against New Destiny and other adult Internet companies challenging Acacia's streaming media patent claims, accusing those companies of unfair business practices, intentional interference with prospective business advantage, trade libel, and patent infringement.
