Among the companies targeted by EFF are Nintendo, media giant Clear Channel, and Acacia Research Corp, which claims to own patents on streaming media and has long been the nemesis of porn webmasters.
EFF in April launched its Patent Busting Project, saying companies aggressively enforcing patents on fundamental technologies cause profound harm to the public and the smaller organizations they sue or threaten to sue.
The organization is seeking examples of prior art, documentation that could be used to invalidate the patents by showing somebody else had the idea first. Patents on ‘obvious’ inventions can be challenged with a reexamination request with the patent office.
Among the patents on EFF’s hit-list is natural language processing technology owned by FirePond Inc, that EFF says is taught in introductory computer science courses and Test.com, which EFF says is pestering colleges about their distance learning systems.
Acacia’s laughably broad patent tops the EFF list. Acacia, which announced yesterday it has signed 145 licensees of its streaming media patent, started by licensing to or suing webmasters at adult sites, and has now advanced to extracting fees from cable companies.
EFF said it picked the ten patents after filtering through dozens of suggestions. The organization said the ten are companies whose crimes have made them enemies of the public domain.
