Court Issues Initial Claim Construction Order in Digital Media Transmission Litigation
Thursday December 8, 7:01 am ET
NEWPORT BEACH, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 8, 2005--Acacia Research Corporation (Nasdaq:ACTG - News) announced today that the District Court for the Northern District of California issued its initial Claim Construction Order in the pending Digital Media Transmission ("DMT®") litigation brought by its Acacia Media Technology Corporation subsidiary against certain Cable, Satellite, and Internet defendants.
In the Order, the Court confirmed its tentative ruling, previously issued on July 12, 2004. In the initial phase of the claim construction process, the Court permitted the parties to submit 22 terms from Acacia's DMT patents to be defined by the Court. The Court has defined 19 terms so far, and has held that 3 terms could not be defined and are indefinite. The indefinite terms potentially invalidate 1 of Acacia's 5 DMT Patents. The Court invited the parties to submit additional terms for construction, as well as motions based upon the Order, to be heard at a hearing on February 24, 2006.
At this time, Acacia expects to submit additional terms to the Court to be defined in the next phase of the claim construction process, and will continue to assert up to 30 patent claims that do not contain the indefinite terms from its 4 other DMT patents, and that Acacia believes are infringed by the defendants. At the earliest opportunity, Acacia also expects to appeal the Court's decision on 2 of the 3 indefinite terms to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
Acacia has 307 license agreements for its DMT technology with companies that provide online entertainment, movies, music, news, sports, corporate advertising and promotion, and e-learning, and cable television services, and hotel on-demand television services |
