Judge Rules Acacia Patent Claims Are Invalid

SAN JOSE, Calif. — A federal appeals court this week affirmed a lower court’s ruling that all of Acacia’s asserted patent claims, over rights to send compressed audio and video signals over a network, are invalid.

"We never backed away from this fight and now we can finally enjoy a victory that benefits our entire industry,” said Spike Goldberg of Homegrown Video who led the Adult Defense Group.

The case reaches all the way back to 2002, when Acacia began sending out media packets to online adult companies asserting that the companies were violating patents associated with its Digital Media Transmission technology, which Acacia claimed covered virtually any manner of transmitting and receiving digital and audio content over the Internet.

Although Acacia was able to secure settlements from a number of adult companies, other companies fought back, and eventually coalesced into the united Adult Defense Group effort, spearheaded by Homegrown Video parent company New Destiny Internet Group.

Homegown Video President Farrell Timlake told XBIZ that the ruling represents an affirmation of his company as well as the industry as a whole.

“A group of companies banded together and saw it through, showing that it can be done. To me, this is truly a major milestone. It’s definitely a big win,” he said.

Timlake said that Acacia has the right to ask the Supreme Court to review the case, but considering several lower courts have already ruled in the matter, he doubts the high court would agree to review it.

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