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Cognex Invalidates Acacia Patent '524; Next? Suing for Business Defamation
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| Do you remember back in 2005 a company called Cognex took on Lemelson
| Partnership and won, invalidating 14 of Lemelson's patents? Well, it turns
| out that after that, they took on Acacia Research, and they just beat them
| too. Acacia is now minus one of its patents. Here's the order [PDF]. Cognex
| is now aggressively going after Acacia for defamation, attorneys fees, and
| damages, including, or so they hope, according to a motion to amend their
| complaint, special and punitive damages.
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http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080622003128295
Recent:
Sprint Nextel, Acacia unit settle patent suit
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| A subsidiary of Acacia Research Corp. and Sprint Nextel Corp. have settled a
| lawsuit alleging that Sprint Nextel had infringed on patents for technology
| used to display mobile vehicle information on maps.
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http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/local-news/kansascity/2008/01/02/sprint-nextel-acacia-unit-settle-patent-suit
A Small Mass. Company Tackles the Patent Trolls
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| Cognex Corp. is a small high-tech Massachusetts public company, yet it's
| funded an unusual, decade-long court offense against several
| so-called "patent trolls," which typically use patents to demand licenses
| from other companies.
|
| [...]
|
| That means patent-holders, like one of Cognex's recent court opponents,
| Acacia Research Corp., are likely to demand more money for such licenses,
| Smith said.
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http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202422445794
Top Ten Patent Trolls of 2007
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| 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.
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http://trolltracker.blogspot.com/2007/12/top-ten-patent-trolls-of-2007.html
Paul Ware and Acacia
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| Ware and Financial Systems Innovation, LLC (a subsidiary of Acacia, formerly
| a subsidiary of TechSearch, the company now known as Global Patent Holdings)
| have filed 10 patent litigations in the last four years, against 144
| defendants. Friedman, Suder & Cooke is representing Ware and Acacia in all of
| the litigation, most of which are pending either in the Northern District of
| Georgia or Northern District of Texas. The big filing was one last June
| against 106 defendants, which I reported on here. While 3 of Ware's cases
| were settled, the rest were stayed pending the first reexamination. There are
| motions in each of those cases to lift the stay. Some are being granted, but
| in other cases, more trouble brews.
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http://trolltracker.blogspot.com/2008/01/paul-ware-and-acacia.html
Who is the world's biggest patent troll?
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| 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."
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http://blogs.cnet.com/8301-13505_1-9816163-16.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
Playing Microsoft Patent Poker
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| 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.
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http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2201579,00.asp?kc=EWRSS03129TX1K0000616
Friday Patent Litigation News
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| 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.
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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
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| 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.
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http://trolltracker.blogspot.com/2007/12/acacia-and-niro-file-another-multi.html
GpsBusinessNews: Cobra settled patent litigation with Acacia Research; TomTom,
Garmin, Magellan
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| Acacia Research Corporation today announced that its subsidiary, Mobile
| Traffic Systems Corporation (MTS), has settled patent litigation against
| Cobra Electronics Corporation that was pending in the United States District
| Court for the Northern District of Alabama. With this settlement MTS has
| entered into a license agreement with Cobra Electronics.
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http://www.digitalmajority.org/forum/t-39668/gpsbusinessnews:cobra-settled-patent-litigation-with-acacia-research-tomtom-garmin-magellan
Acacia Sues Apple over iTunes ... In East St. Louis, Again
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| New Acacia subsidiary Restricted Spending Solutions, LLC sued Apple last
| Wednesday in East St. Louis, Illinois, in the Southern District of Illinois.
| Acacia sued Apple last November in the Southern District of Illinois over the
| iChat feature, as I reported here.
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http://trolltracker.blogspot.com/2008/02/acacia-sues-apple-over-itunes-in-east.html
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