A scheduled July 7 court hearing on Acacia Research Corp.'s bid to group litigation against some adult Internet companies into a class action case has been postponed indefinitely.
U.S. District Judge James Ware was said to be concerned that some claim term limitations might not be definable, and indicated he might allow the defendants to file a motion to declare them as such. That was according to Victor de Gyarfas, an attorney who is part of the team defending the adult Internet companies against Acacia's Digital Media Transmission infringement claims.
These adult companies have argued in previous court sessions that some terms under debate were “indefinite.” Acacia has argued that the claim terms are clear enough.
"If a claim limitation is found to be indefinite," de Gyarfas said, "any claim that has that indefinite limitation is invalid. [This is a] big potential point [for those challenging the Acacia claims]. We won't know for sure until we get the judge's ruling, but it certainly doesn't sound bad."
Ware decided July 6 to delay the class action hearing, but he might still make a tentative claims-construction ruling later this week, de Gyarfas said, though the attorney added that even that isn't final. The sides are set for now to have another status conference by telephone August 17.
Had the class action hearing proceeded as originally scheduled July 7, however, it still might have been several weeks before Ware handed down a ruling on the motion.
"I'm not unhappy," New Destiny/Homegrown Video chief Spike Goldberg, whose company co-leads the aforementioned adult Internet challenge to the Acacia patent claims, told AVNOnline.com about the postponement. "Nothing has changed. I expect that we'll be in court over this matter at some point in the future."
VS Media chief Greg Clayman, also a co-leader of the adult Internet challengers, agreed. "I'm eagerly awaiting the tentative Markman rulings, as I'm sure Acacia isn't."
Acacia executive vice president Robert Berman was unavailable for comment.
Court hearings in the so-called Markman process, in which a trial judge weighs evidence and definitions before determining patent claims as matters of law, began in early February. Aside from patent claim terms construction, the hearings have highlighted the defining of an invention's elements and sequencing, and whether an invention that might be a new grouping of previously existing elements can be classified as an invention in its own right.
This week, Acacia ended at least one litigation when it signed a DMT licensing deal with Central Valley Cable TV, a California company that was one of nine cable and satellite providers against whom Acacia filed infringement litigation in mid-June. Acacia also signed 21 such licensing deals with a number of corporate Websites and e-learning companies whom it did not identify, bringing the total DMT licensing deals to 145.
