This morning, Google indexed a filing from December 17th from Level 3 Communications who filed a patent infringement suit against Limelight Networks (Case number 2:2007cv00589) in the District Court of Virgina. I have not been able to get a copy of the filing as of yet but I was able to speak to Level 3 about the filing this morning.

While Level 3 is not giving out many details of the suit, as is common in these cases, they were able to confirm that the patent(s) in question were acquired by Level 3 from SAVVIS as part of the sale of SAVVIS’s CDN assets. Level 3 would not say how many patents are in question or give out patent numbers at this time, but they did say that the infringement relates specifically to content distribution. They would not say what kind of content distribution, video, static, applications etc… but were willing to say that the patent(s) in question have never been previously asserted in any patent infringement case.

Level 3 has over 850 worldwide patents and patent applications in their portfolio and did say that when they decided to get into the CDN business that they viewed having patents pertaining to the product as being a key factor that would help determine their long term success. At this time, Level 3 would not comment on any other networks who might be infringing on their patents or speculate on additional infringement cases.

I’ve put in a request to Limelight Networks and will update the post if I hear from them this weekend. I also expect to have a copy of the filing shortly and am looking to see what records exist that talk about the SAVVIS patents, which really comes from the Cable and Wireless patents that SAVVIS acquired.

UPDATE: Guillaume Courouge was selected as the winner using a random number picker website.

The nice folks over at MediaGate sent one of their MG-350HD Wireless HD Media Players for me to review, but with the holidays and other deadlines I am under, I won’t have a chance to do a product review anytime soon. I did however find a really positive product review on the unit over at HomeTheaterBlog.com

Since I won’t be able to review the unit, they have nicely said I can give it away to a reader of my blog. All you have to do is leave one comment on this post with a working e-mail address. I will pick one user at random a week from today and ship it out to the winner at no cost.  

If any company is interested in getting exposure for their video related product on my blog and is willing to give away the product, contact me. I will post pictures of the product, link to the company website and either write a product review or link to other reviews on the web. It’s great exposure on a blog that does over 300,000 page views a month.

Hot on the heels of EdgeCast announcing it had raised $6 million dollars, content delivery provider CDNetworks announced late yesterday that it had raised $96.5 million in private placement. For CDNetworks, this funding now gives them the ability to make a serious push in the U.S. market for content delivery of video and static content. The funding announcement also coincides with the launch of a new company website.

To date, CDNetworks primary business has solely been in Asia but over the past few months they have been out in the U.S. market selling services and ramping up their sales team. From the pricing I have seen in RFPs, they are not the low cost leader in the space and they are not, I repeat, not undercutting Limelight and others on price just to win market share. I think all CDN providers understand by now that they can’t give this stuff away just to win market share and expect to stay in business. The pricing "war" that so many analysts are "speculating" on is completely overblown in the market. Just because a new provider enters the market does not mean they are selling on price.

Now that we have our Brigthcove video player up on StreamingMedia.com, I am looking for someone who knows the Brightcove system well enough who can help customize our player using Brightcove’s API as well as setup a bunch of new video titles and lineups for us in the system. Will pay an hourly rate to get the work done and it can be done a little at a time. If interested, please send me an e-mail with your hourly rate and  some background on your expertise with the Brightcove system.

Thanks to ScribeMedia.org and Brightcove, we now have all of the conference sessions archived in video from the Streaming Media West 2007 show. You can access the videos from the home page of our website or at: www.streamingmedia.com/videos

In addition, I will be adding to our Brightcove player all of the videos from our past East, West and Europe shows as well. However, it will take me some time to upload all of the 300+ videos so please bear with us.

I’ve got another moderator spot open for someone who wants to organize a session at Streaming Media East around H.264 and talk to the major announcements that took place in the past year and what will become of H.264 next year. This session is probably more geared towards a technical discussion but should also cover content trends and usage adoption taking place in the market. H.264 is a hot topic and is only going to get hotter next year.

Ideally, the moderator is not from a vendor company or someone who is selling a product or service involved with H.264 of any kind or can convince me you don’t have a conflict of interest. Again, bloggers and others who write and cover this topic for the industry are ideal. Send me an e-mail if interested.

I’m looking for an individual who covers the lifecasting segment of the industry and has been keeping a close eye on companies like Kyte.tv, Justin.tv, Zannel and Seesmic. I plan to have a session about this topic at the next Streaming Media East show in May in NYC and am looking for a moderator who wants to organize and lead this session.

The ideal candidate would be someone who is writing about these companies in the market, has a blog of their own, or has experience in what is required as a moderator to produce a quality session. If you’re interested, please send me an e-mail along with a brief description of why this is a fit for you.