The document contends that one of Acacia Technologies Group's five U.S. Digital Media Transmission patents is not “novel in a scientific/technological sense.”
The brief technical review of an audio and video transmission and receiving system was prepared by the Communications Research Laboratory at the David Sarnoff Research Center in Princeton, NJ. The April 17, 1992 report was prepared for Greenwich Technologies, the previous owner of the patent in question.
Acacia eventually bought the Greenwich Technologies’ patent. The Newport Beach, Calif.- based firm is using its collection of patents as the basis for infringement lawsuits against a number of adult Internet companies as well as other industries, including online learning institutions and cable and satellite providers.
The technical summary states: “The patent supplied by Greenwich Technologies outlines a generic set of technologies necessary for a video-on-demand system…Based on our review of published material… in the area of video-on-demand, interactive media, etc., we do not consider the overall system architecture to be novel in a scientific/technological sense.”
Critics of Acacia contend that this casts shadows on Acacia and its infringement claims in two ways: “This confirms what we have said all along,” said Spike Goldberg, CEO of Homegrown Video and a member of the New Destiny Internet Group, et al, which consists of more than a dozen adult entertainment companies that are defendants in the Acacia case.
“Acacia says their patents have been validated and that they have referenced patent firm reports,” Goldberg told XBiz. “But this document doesn’t.”
In addition to shedding doubt on the originality of Acacia’s patents and the validity of the firm’s infringement claims, detractors of Acacia claim that the patent holder's alleged failure to release the document constitutes “inequitable conduct.”
An insider source told XBiz: “This is a very bad document for Acacia. The company is supposed to disclose documents and prior art. They tried to slip this review in later.”
XBiz spoke with Acacia’s Senior Vice President of Business Development Rob Berman who declined to comment for this story.
David Sarnoff, whom the David Sarnoff Research Laboratory is named after, was a renowned radio and TV pioneer who worked for RCA.