Warning: Acacia Research patent extortion attempt (Ross Finlayson)

Dear folks:

A useful act beneficial to the public that you can undertake is to 
submit the frivolous patents to the Public Patent foundation, 
www.pubpat.org, together with any relevant prior art you are aware of.  
They are in the business of 'helping' the PTO reverse silly patent 
awards, which is better than simply redirecting the scam artists to 
another victim.  The Electronic Frontier Foundation, www.eff.org, also 
participates in this work.

Daniel M. Dobkin
Enigmatics
1-408-314-2769
[email protected]

<<
Today I received in the mail a letter from "Acacia Research", claiming 
that
a wireless hot spot that I run infringes upon their US patent
#<http://tinyurl.com/5ho2g>6,226,677, and asking that I "enter into a
licensing agreement" with them.  From the mailing address that they 
used,
it is clear that they got my address by searching for web pages that
describe wireless access points.  Therefore, I wouldn't be surprised if
other people on this mailing list receive similar letters.

Their 'patent' basically describes a specialized TCP proxy that controls
access to the Internet from the user's computer.  Because my network
doesn't use such a proxy (it provides a direct connection to the 
Internet),
there's no possible way that it could infringe.  However, for those of 
you
who run 'captive portals', it's not inconceivable that they might be
covered by this patent.

One important thing to note, though: This patent was filed on January 
15,
1999, and awarded on May 1, 2001.  Therefore, there is almost certain 
to be
*lots* of prior art covering this.

It turns out that this company - Acacia Research - has been buying up 
lots
of patents, and does business by trying to shake down several (mostly
small) companies that it clams is 'infringing' upon them.  For more
information, see <http://www.fightthepatent.com/> and
<http://www.paidcontent.org/pc/arch/cat_acacia.shtml> (search for
"<http://tinyurl.com/5ho2g>6,226,677").
 >>

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