The president of Matrix Content rejects speculation on adult Webmaster discussion boards that, when his company signed a licensing deal involving Acacia Media Technologies' controversial streaming media patent claims, the company also gave Acacia affiliate members' information.
"It's horseshit," said Norman Bentley to AVN.com, stressing he was speaking strictly for himself and not necessarily his company. "And it's really upsetting me." He said the speculation began when people "began getting these letters" about Acacia and its licensing deals, in which Matrix was mentioned as one of the recently signed licensees for Acacia's Digital Media Transmission patent claim.
Bentley said Matrix had been part of the original group of adult Internet companies who elected to challenge the claims, even contributing several thousand dollars to the effort, but elected to sign a licensing deal with Acacia simply because Matrix could not afford to continue its part in the challenge.
"The reason we chose to fight them was because, at first, they wanted our Webmasters and stuff," Bentley said. "The only (other) reason why we did settle was because they did not require us to inform (them of) anyone. When it first started, yes. But when we licensed, no."
Bentley said he had no intention of biting the hand that feeds him – the hand of adult Webmasters.
"I'm a straight B to B company," he said. "We're not a site where we can go generate traffic and don't need Webmasters. And this is very upsetting because we pride ourselves on our reputation, this is not making me happy. And I made a statement of it. People were asking why we settled, and it was based on dollars and cents. We couldn't afford to keep fighting."
Meanwhile, in a related development, New Destiny/Homegrown Video chief Spike Goldberg and Videosecrets chief Greg Clayman said Acacia's just-announced third quarter results speak "of spin, spin, spin," regarding Acacia's apparent underplaying of the continuing legal challenge to the streaming media patent claims.
Clayman said the company was asked, during a conference call announcing the quarterly results, if it saw any potential problems for ongoing litigation, but that the company answered it "did not foresee" any major coming litigation issues.
"I'm not sure if (they are) in denial," Clayman said, "but there are a bunch of companies" – namely, New Destiny, Videosecrets, and several others – "who filed a counter claim (in September), they are in court, in litigation, and some of our counterclaims (include) non-infringement, unenforceability of the patents in question, unfair trade practices, and abuse of process. And this is all public information."
Acacia's third quarter report stated among other things that they estimate between $1.1 million and $1.5 million annually from the DMT license deals they have signed. "I don't know what they expected to earn from (the adult industry) in the first (full) year," Goldberg said, "but it looks like it's falling very short (of expectations)."
