Patent Trolls after Podcasts now

[Jim K Global Moderator]

Patent trolls are now going after podcasts.  Their first victim is Adam Carolla who has received a lawsuit from "Personal Audio".  Typically patent trolls goes after businesses who "infringe" on their patents

 

Quote

A mysterious group that calls itself Personal Audio claims the patent it owns for a "system for disseminating media content representing episodes in a serialized sequence" applies to podcasts. And that means anyone who does a podcast is infringing on that patent and is liable for licensing fees. In essence, the group is saying the very act of podcasting itself is controlled by their patent.

Personal Audio is no stranger to the world of trolling, having sued Apple (AAPL) on the claim that the iPod infringes on its patent for "downloadable playlists." It originally sought $84 million in damages, and a court awarded it $8 million.

http://www.dailyfinance.com/on/adam-carolla-patent-troll-podcasting-lawsuit-stakes/

 

The problem is that if Adam were to lose, then you can pretty much bet that all podcasts would go down or that the folks doing the podcasts would have to start charging licensing fees.  I would also venture to bet that this does affect just the delivery of podcasts but any other type of "serialized sequence" of disseminating media.  It really doesn't matter what you think of Adam Carolla...this is about patent trolls going after those that work on podcasts which a lot of us enjoy.

 

Anyway, take a look at https://fundanything.com/en/campaigns/patenttroll

 

And legislation is out there, like HR 3309 which will hopefully make it more difficult for these trolls to extort money and tie up courts.

 

 

[Praetor]

isn't the patent the same of those old soap opera that used to go on the radios back then? i mean, those were "media content representing episodes in a serialized sequence" transmitted in a "system for disseminating"?

 

food for thought.

[+Red King Subscriber²]

Never used pod casts, don't care.

[thejohnnyq]

I started 'PodCasting' back in 1995.   Prior Art eliminates the patent claims.

[LaP]

Never used pod casts, don't care.

 

You should.

 

It's not about Podcasts. It's about patent trolls. And you should definitely care about patent trolls.

 

Often patent trolls use patents that are not valid and even if they perfectly know they gonna lose they sue and hope the people they sue will settle cause often it's less expensive to make a settlement than pay lawyers.

 

The system is broken beyond repair but our governments wont do anything cause the people who benefit from this broken system give a lot of money to politicians to finance their campaign.

I started 'PodCasting' back in 1995.   Prior Art eliminates the patent claims.

 

I would be more than extremely surprised this patent holds in a court of law. It's a totally laughable patent and it should have never ever been awarded. But they don't care cause lot of people will settle and give them money without going to trial.