Streamticker 2007: The Year in Mergers, Acquisitions, and Fundings
Aggregator succeeded in generating more than 50,000 monthly subscriptions for specialized programming, and RawFlow intends to use the acquisition to introduce micro-payment systems that would then generate additional payments for on-demand content.
Mikkel Dissing, CEO of RawFlow, believes a paid subscription model is the future of online broadcasting. He comments, "We believe that the content management and payment system on the Aggregator platform fits perfectly with the long-term strategy for Selfcast. The whole ethos of Aggregator was that even small or medium-sized content providers should be able to make money from the content they provide, this is the ethos and future of Selfcast also."
The End of All Things
Consumer search is different from enterprise search. Autonomy Corp. discovered this "after years of successful research and development." The company announced that it would float a consumer division as a separate company on the London Stock Exchange.
"Autonomy’s consumer division is formed from Autonomy’s research and development related to the application of Autonomy’s award-winning IDOL technology to the consumer space," a press release read, "and blinkx."
The blinkx plc name was used for the float after Autonomy exercised an option on a key number of blinkx shares, which it touts as the world’s leading video search engine for the consumer sector.
"The consumer unit, to be listed as blinkx plc, is to be demerged from Autonomy as blinkx’s focus on consumer-directed search services differs from Autonomy’s focus on enterprise applications," a release said, "and as a result the companies address different markets and clients."
And Then There Was the Patent
No mention of mergers and acquisitions in the streaming media space would be complete these days without a mention of patent acquisitions. We’ll be covering patent acquisitions and enforcement in more detail throughout 2008, as the purchase of streaming media patents continues to raise hackles from the university quad to the boardroom.
Acacia, which has successfully purchased numerous patents and cut deals with major universities, continues to move forward, although a recent ruling in a Texas case against Microsoft dealt Acacia a bit of a blow. A jury ruled against Computer Acceleration Corp., an Acacia subsidiary, in a patent case filed against Microsoft. Acacia claimed its patent was infringed, but the jury begged to differ. The jury ruled the claim invalid, sending its stock down more than 30% in a single day.
Still, the beat goes on. In the course of the year, another Acacia subsidiary, Digital Background Corp.—which holds Michael Steffano’s patent for background removal and foreground insertion of objects in video chat—filed suit against Apple for patent infringement over a similar technology introduced into Apple’s iChat in the new OS X Leopard operating system.
In the meantime, another suit against Apple that never made it beyond the Markman phase was settled for a surprisingly low $10 million just before Thanksgiving. Burst, which holds a patent for "bursting" media delivery that allows for "fast start" streaming, declared victory when Apple settled—and then announced Apple was granted amnesty on other patents. This is especially intriguing, given that a similar lawsuit Burst filed against Microsoft ended with a $60 million settlement. In more recent news RealNetworks filed a patent lawsuit against Burst in January 2008; no further information was available as of press time.
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