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[News] [Rival] Microsoft Patent on "Big Brother", Acacia Troll Keeps Attacking

  • Subject: [News] [Rival] Microsoft Patent on "Big Brother", Acacia Troll Keeps Attacking
  • From: Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Thu, 03 Jan 2008 13:05:49 +0000
  • Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy
  • Organization: Netscape / schestowitz.com
  • User-agent: KNode/0.10.4
Acacia December 2007 Update

,----[ Quote ]
| Turning to our busiest patent troll in 2007, Acacia, it kept up momentum in 
| December with new lawsuits. 
| 
| [...]
| 
| So, let's get this straight. Acacia, a California company located in CDCA, is 
| an exclusive licensee who has sued 19 defendants, who are located in 17 
| different judicial districts (including CDCA)  
`----

http://trolltracker.blogspot.com/2008/01/acacia-december-2007-update.html

Microsoft readies Hal 9000

,----[ Quote ]
| Judging from a recent patent application, Microsoft hopes to build some sort 
| of "activity monitoring system" that keeps an eye on worker productivity 
| using various "physiological or environmental sensors." These sensors would 
| track everything from heart rate, respiration rate, body temperature, facial 
| expressions, and blood pressure to brain signals and galvanic skin response.    
`----

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/03/microsoft_hopes_to_patent_big_brother/


Related:

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Forget-about-the-WGA-20-Windows-Vista-Features-and-Services-Harvest-User-Data-for-Microsoft-58752.shtml


Microsoft patents the mother of all adware systems

,----[ Quote ]
| The adware framework would leave almost no data untouched in its quest to 
| sell you stuff. It would inspect "user document files, user e-mail files, 
| user music files, downloaded podcasts, computer settings, computer status 
| messages (e.g., a low memory status or low printer ink)," and more. How could 
| we have been so blind as to not see the marketing value in computer status 
| messages?     
`----

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070717-microsoft-patents-the-mother-of-all-adware-systems.html


Top Ten Patent Trolls of 2007

,----[ Quote ]
| 3. Acacia. I didn't start tracking Acacia carefully until the summer. But 
| still, on my blog I have reported on over two dozen lawsuits brought by 
| Acacia this year, against more than 235 defendants. That's in addition to the 
| over 200 lawsuits Acacia filed in previous years against hundreds and 
| hundreds of defendants. And that's not including the two lawsuits (at least) 
| Acacia has filed in December against 20 more defendants (yes, Acacia, I'm 
| watching you). Acacia's business model, as a publicly traded company, is to 
| accumulate patents and sue as many companies as possible in order to extract 
| licenses. They have a market cap of over 275 million - that pays for a lot of 
| lawsuits. Unlike other trolls, Acacia tends to not focus on one court in 
| particular, although they have sampled the Eastern District of Texas more 
| this year than in the past.           
`----

http://trolltracker.blogspot.com/2007/12/top-ten-patent-trolls-of-2007.html


Yahoo Patent Troll

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvFUSHwRXJE


Who is the world's biggest patent troll?

,----[ Quote ]
| In two consecutive days, The Wall Street Journal presented two different 
| answers. The first is not surprising: Intellectual Ventures, the brainchild 
| of ex-Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold. It's now out "to raise as much as 
| $1 billion to help develop and patent inventions, many of them from 
| universities in Asia."   
`----

http://blogs.cnet.com/8301-13505_1-9816163-16.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20


Playing Microsoft Patent Poker 

,----[ Quote ]
| This time though, while Ballmer slinks away to try to con … convince people 
| that Microsoft Unified Communications somehow offers people more than what 
| Cisco's VOIP (voice over IP) been offering customers for years, a patent 
| attack finally launches at Linux. Specifically, IP Innovation, a subsidiary 
| of Acacia Technologies Group, has filed a patent infringement claim against 
| Linux distributors Novell and Red Hat.     
| 
| So was it just timing, or was it something more? Let's take a look at the 
| players.  
`----

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2201579,00.asp?kc=EWRSS03129TX1K0000616


The Goldfarb Declaration - Updated: MS Statement

,----[ Quote ]
| According to the Declaration, Richard Emerson was not the only
| Microsoft employee Goldfarb was dealing with in connection with the
| BayStar investment in SCO. He mentions by name two others, from two
| other departments.
`----

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20061009152706664


,----[ Quote ]
| "There you have it. At least a third of SCO's entire market
| capitalization, and their entire current cash reserves, is payoffs
| funnelled from Microsoft. Their 10Qs reveal that every other line of
| cash inflow is statistical noise by comparison. The brave new
| SCO source business model is now clear: sue your customers, shill
| for Microsoft, kite your stock, and pray you stay out of jail."
`----

http://www.catb.org/~esr/halloween/halloween10.html


Friday Patent Litigation News

,----[ Quote ]
| Reader Anthony Sabatini of New York writes to tell me that the auto-text 
| patent asserted by Acacia subsidiary AutoText in Cleveland might be invalid 
| in light of the Control Data Corp CDC6600 console system developed two 
| decades earlier.   
| 
| [...]
| 
| Finally, IP Innovation and Technology Licensing Corp. -- in other words, 
| ACACIA -- filed a lawsuit in Marshall against Google, accusing Google's 
| search engine and Google Earth of infringing two patents. This is the same 
| Acacia sub that sued Red Hat and Novell over Linux, with the same lawyers - 
| Johnny Ward and Eric Albritton. But these are different patents. The patents 
| asserted against Google are 5,276,785 and 5,675,819, which Acacia got from 
| Xerox. Nice going, Xerox.      
`----

http://trolltracker.blogspot.com/2007/11/friday-patent-litigation-news.html


Acacia and Niro File Another Multi-Defendant Lawsuit on JPEG-on-a-Website
Patent, Bringing Total to 16 Companies Sued

,----[ Quote ]
| Assuming it files one per month for the next 39 months until the patent 
| expires, then what Acacia is really seeking is $600M from US industry for the 
| JPEG-on-a-website patent. My guess is they’ll sue many more companies than 
| that, and seek up to a billion dollars – which, assuming a 33% contingency 
| fee (which is low, probably), amounts to a cool $100 million per year for the 
| Niro firm.     
| 
| And people wonder why he’d like to shut down websites critical of Acacia and 
| other patent trolls. The real question is what does he want from you and me, 
| for our photo blogs, our personal websites. His statements to IP Law 360 only 
| referred to companies.   
| 
| The other real question is how many companies will spend millions in 
| attorneys fees to fight rather than pay the $500K or $1M or $2M that Acacia 
| is demanding. That's the sad state of patent litigation these days.  
`---- 

http://trolltracker.blogspot.com/2007/12/acacia-and-niro-file-another-multi.html

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