Looks like things are heating up....
Acacia Research unit sued in patent dispute
WILMINGTON, Del,July 20(Reuters) -Acacia research Corp's (ACRI - news) V-chip technology unit, Soundview Technologies Inc, has been sued by PG Distribution Inc of Omaha, Nebraska.
In a complaint filed Friday in the U.S. District Court in Delaware, PG alleged that Soundview's patent for a ''Video and audio blanking system'' was invalid because Soundview ''failed to comply with the requirements'' of the patent code.
According to court papers, the patent inventors ''knowingly withheld and misrepresented in proceedings in the U.S. Patent Office, prior art, knowledge. information and data which would have been pertinent...in the issuance of the '584 patent.''
PG attorney Jonathan Marshall, of Pennie & Edmonds LLP in New York, told Reuters that PG owns intellectual property and the right to manufacture V-chips. V (for ''violence) chips are microchips that can be programmed to recognize rating signals from unwanted programs and block their transmission to viewers' television sets.
Soundview president H. Lee Browne said that the 1996 Telecommunications Act requires all television manufacturers to install V-chips in receivers 13 inches in diameter or larger after June 30, 1999. Owners can install V-chips in existing sets with a retrofitting kit.
''Soundview owns the patent for the V-chip. We are in the process of licensing manufacturers of television receivers and after-market V-chip retrofit boxes..Parental Guide makes retrofit boxes and expect to have licensing contracts at a reasonable royalty completed in the next few weeks,'' Browne told Reuters from the company's Greenwich, Connecticut offices.
''We've told PG, which distributes retrofit boxes to wholesalers and retailers, that their product will infringe and they need to take a license. This lawsuit is a negotiating ploy to weaken our hand in negotiations and it's done all the time. We expected it, we're not concerned about it, and we're prepared to deal with it...This will just delay their having to pay for a while,'' Browne said.
Virtually all the 25 million television sets affected by the V-chip requirement are manufactured outside the U.S. with some assembled in the U.S., according to Browne.
PG's lawsuit seeks a court determination that the Soundview patent is invalid and that PG does not infringe it; and an injunction barring Soundview from suing PG.
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