May 08, 2004
Jenna Jameson Gets All Lessig On Us
Now, this is a confluence of interests. The sex business and patent activism, two of my favorite subjects, in one topic!
Jenna Jameson, famous porn star, has lent moral support to the fight against yet another spurious technology patent, this one by one Acacia Research that claims to cover pretty much all streaming media.
(Of course, Jenna is a savvy businesswoman and nobody’s fool . . . her site has plenty of streaming content on it, too.)
As usual, the depth of the patent holders commitment is shown in that they are going after adult industry sites, rather than, say, Apple, Microsoft, or Real, the companies that actually build the technology. Of course, Apple and Microsoft have enormous cash mountains and battalions of lawyers to fight just such absurd suits . . . I detect some traditional playground bully behavior here on the part of Acacia.
Of course, this “bet the company on a highly dubious IP claim” strategy is hardly unique to Acacia. Just like in that case, the hope is that you score easy victories against soft targets who can’t afford a long patent fight, hoping that you can build up enough bad case law and cash so that you can then either go after the big boys, or have enough to retire on when the IP is found to be bogus and the music stops.
What we need is a wholesale revision of intellectual property law. Until then, it’s just going to be one of these stupid cases after another.
posted 08:54