Even worse.
Their goal is to profit from blocking innovation in large markets initiated by large companies technology rollouts.
Acacia is a bunch of lawyers ultimately trying to dip their hands into a large company's cookie jar by collecting.
They are operating quickly and quietly to create precedent sooner rather than later.
At least Qualcomm created a product and put their cards on the table about what they ultimately wanted from the industry - there's something at least honest about that.
You can also deal with technology competitors in a constructive way, by swapping IP or something else that's constructive, that gets everyone moving forward, rather than what these lawyers do which is to make money off of blocking large markets (wifi, voip, etc.)
In a nutshell, these are lawyers that profit by making companies bribe them to let them "go ahead". They essentially are a white-collar sophisticated mafia.
I believe they try to win over medium-sized companies by telling them to pay millions to avoid a lawsuit and I think they pitch that buying into the Acacia royalty system means you can knock off your smaller competitors by creating a cost-bar-to-entry - a very alluring appeal for some mid-size firms. It effectively puts a dollar amount on how much you want to pay to knock off the competition. But the risk is that Acacia's appeal of killing off your competitor thru legal means, could ultimately back fire if your goal is to grow a market with innovation. So it depends whether you are an entrenched incumbent or an innovator. I think that's why Disney gave Acacia money - Disney is legacy while innovators like Microsoft, Yahoo, etc represent a type of threat to Hollywood. When they are done, Disney will be able to get Microsoft's and Yahoo's customers because Disney's customers will have indemnity because Disney paid for it, meanwhile, Microsoft's and Yahoo's customers won't have indemnity so they will choose Disney instead. Additionally, if you are the last company buying indemnity, it could cost more than the first so your entry could be higher. If a company wants to sell a product that requires more Cisco gear in the account, that company cannot unless they buy indemnity or sue, thus Cisco's gear doesn't get sold. Not necessarily a bad thing, if Cisco's goal is to reduce their partners to only those that have purchased indemnity. The risk could be innovation for Cisco's overall market and what that could do for future growth. Hard for me to judge.
So basically Acacia walks around and seeks out entrenched players and asks them to pay them money. At the moment, it's basically entrenched players that are coughing up money. The large innovators aren't. They are quietly watching this.
One dirty way for Silicon Valley to fight Acacia, is for the large companies to work their industry contacts and convince a bunch of medium size firms to sue Acacia on IP counter claims. It would only take 30 firms to make them go bankrupt. Lawsuits usually cost around $100k/mo per suit for a year, usually more.
Regards,
Amy J |
