From an article by Dan Rayburn in StreamingMedia.com: "California-based holding company Acacia Research claims they hold patents on streaming, downloading and just about every form of digital audio and video distribution out there -- including pushing MP3s from peer-to-peer groups, streaming newscasts from Internet radio sites and delivering movies through cable networks...

"Last year, Acacia sent letters to numerous adult Internet sites and radio webcasters demanding a license fee for the utilization of this technology. Not wanting to limit their reach, Acacia is now also going after universities, streaming media service providers, content portals, and Fortune 1000 corporations. Even if your corporation does not stream audio and video from its website and simply links to websites that do, Acacia claims that also violates their patent...

"Acacia appears to have made a business of buying patents and then using the threat of massive legal action to force companies into paying them licensing fees...

"Acacia's streaming media licensing efforts are based on five patents, all of which cover basically the same thing... 'A system of distributing video and/or audio information... compressed and encoded audio and/or video information is sent over standard telephone, cable or satellite broadcast channels to a receiver specified by a subscriber of the service, preferably in less than real time, for later playback..."

"The patents do not mention the Internet as a transmission medium...

"As of January 2004, Acacia has been successful in convincing 114 companies to pay them a licensing fee. The majority of those companies have been small radio webcasters like Radio Free Virgin... Several adult content Internet companies... are fighting back and have banded together to form the Internet Media Protective Association (IMPA) and FightThePatent.com...

"To date, it appears that Acacia hasn't faced off against streaming industry leaders like Microsoft, RealNetworks, Apple or AOL... It is only a matter of time before they will feel strong enough to tackle the big boys. 'If the company can set a precedent against the smaller players,' says (IMPA Chairman Edward) Goldberg, 'the company would be better able to press its case further up the line.'

"The impact of Acacia's actions should not be underestimated... These patents have the potential to put companies in the streaming media space out of business...

"Numerous Fortune 1000 corporations and universities have received letters from Acacia and, not knowing what to do or where to get more information, reacted by removing all of the streaming from their websites...

"A February 6 hearing is set for Acacia's legal team and the 13 adult entertainment companies counter-suing the patent holder in which the judge will take the first steps in determining the meaning of the patents and whether they are based on ideas or actual processes."

Read Rayburn's entire story from StreamingMedia.com at their site here.

StreamingMedia.com has created an online resource (here) where you can get detailed information on Acacia, including links to the patents, prior court documents, contact information for the patent lawyers, copies of letters companies have received, and more. They have also initiated an Acacia e-mail newsletter, Acacia Newsletter for up to date information regarding this matter in court and in the press. The IMPA and FightThePatent.com also have collections of links to Acacia-related information. (The IMPA's is here, FightThePatent's here.) RAIN first covered this issue -- and spoke to Acacia Senior VP/General Counsel Rob Berman and ioMedia Partners (parent of Acacia target RadioIO) President Mike Roe -- last February here. In April, we excerpted from a Forbes article here.

From The New York Times: "Television commercials, in all their big, loud glory, are coming to the Web... More than a dozen Web sites, including MSN, ESPN, Lycos and iVillage, (have begun to) run full-motion video commercials from Pepsi, AT&T, Honda, Vonage and Warner Brothers, in a six-week test that some analysts and online executives say could herald the start of a new era of Internet advertising...

"The new ad technology, from Unicast, an advertising company based in New York, invisibly loads the commercial while unwitting users read a Web page, then displays the ad across the entire browser area when users click to a new page. The resulting ad is identical to TV, whether the user has a high- or low-speed connection...

"If users are annoyed at this development, they can blame high-speed connections... The number of United States households with broadband connections reached 49.5 million late last year, or 38 percent of all households, according to Nielsen/NetRatings... Of the 50 million people who surf the Web at work, 94 percent have broadband connections, according to comScore Networks...

"Publishers like Disney's ESPN.com expect to charge as much as $35 for every thousand ads displayed. That is about twice what TV networks charge advertisers for some prime-time programs, and well more than the average of $10 per 1,000 viewers charged by some of the Web's most successful publishers, like MSN...

"Elise Brahmer, a media supervisor for RPA, an ad agency in Santa Monica, Calif., that manages Honda's online campaigns, among others, said she thought audible ads 'will slowly become more acceptable over time.' In the interim, Ms. Brahmer said, she will still buy 'massive amounts' of the Unicast ads. 'Our expectations for this are huge,' she said."

Read this entire New York Times article online here.

...

... The most appropriate places on the web for advertisers to run audible ads are places where users are expecting to hear audio! In other words, it's only logical that advertisers should use up the entire avails inventory of Internet radio before they need to look elsewhere for avails. And for video (i.e., TV spots), an ideal position would of course be the video gateway ad that can run upon the launch of an Internet radio stream. -- KH ...