Acacia Media Technologies will not continue offering waivers for claims of past due fees or royalties over its claimed streaming media patents for very much longer, although the company hasn't yet said just when that offer will expire.
"Our offer to license people on a go-forward basis and waive amounts due for past infringement is coming to a close," said vice president and general counsel Rob Berman. "And Webmasters are going to have to quickly decide to license our technology or take their chances."
Acacia has been litigating over the streaming media patents, a group of patents the company calls Digital Media Technology, since late last year. "We will continue to enforce our patent rights against companies that use our technology without a license," said Berman. "We recently signed our 40th license agreement and it's not fair to our licensees to have other companies use our technology for free."
New Destiny Media/Homegrown Video chief Spike Goldberg – whose company is one of several challenging the Acacia patent claims in court – said he thinks the advisory on ending the past due fee/royalty waivers is an indication Acacia's licensing "hasn't worked" quite as they hoped.
"Everything they've done up until now has been an attempt to scare people into licensing," said Goldberg, who has banded with a number of other adult Internet companies to fight Acacia's patent claims, individually and through a trade group they formed called the Internet Media Protective Association. "Now they're going back to the drawing board."
Goldberg said the Acacia battle especially is a time in which the adult Web community will stand and go forward or risk being rolled over almost entirely.
"Engaging in this lawsuit, we're starting to see questions (from others) like, what if these big companies settle, what if someone with deep pockets is settling?" he said. "Well, somebody is fighting. Somebody believes these patents are invalid. Somebody believes they don't infringe. Webmasters have to decide whether they're going to stand up or roll over."
"Acacia is trying to take millions every year out of our industry," said Goldberg's partner, Farrell. "For us to make a stand as an industry, the expense is enormous if it's borne by a few companies, and Acacia is counting on that being the case. One by one, they get companies to roll in with their patents, whether they agree with it or not. We decided we're going to fight it, to take that cost on, and we look forward to a day in court."
Goldberg said again that he doesn't question Acacia's right to enforce its patent claim, but those who dispute them have the same right to decide what they want to do, whether to agree to Acacia terms or to discuss and challenge the patents.
"If Acacia felt so strong about those patents," Goldberg said, "why don't they go after Microsoft or any of those companies? They go after what they perceive to be the weakest segment of the Internet, but we're not. And it bothers them…(But) this is like Pandora's Box. Once this is open, there are a lot more people coming to do the same thing."
