For podcasters, a welcome patent reversal
If you’re a fan of Serial, This American Life, and National Public Radio, and if your day doesn’t really get launched without a laugh from the likes of Adam Corolla, well, all you podcast aficionados can take a deep breath: Personal Audio LLC, a patent claimant that had threatened to flip a fiscal off switch on many on the medium, has lost a key legal contest. Infringement claims The firm has pursued infringement and licensing fee claims against many podcasters, winning some cases and attracting the attention of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, whose attorneys appealed to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board. There, many of the key claims in the “podcasting patent” held by Personal Audio were invalidated by officials who decided that Personal Audio did not actually make anything new before filing its application; the board, therefore, found that the key patents at issue were “un-patent-able.” Personal Audio has asserted for awhile that podcasters like Corolla infringed on its broad claim to the technology and owed the firm licensing fees. These claims ultimately led to settlements with many podcasters, though these resolved cases likely proved less profitable to Personal Audio than it might have wished. The firm did end a much publicized battle with Corolla; no terms were disclosed. Personal Audio went to court over some of its infringement claims and won a $1.3 million judgment against CBS (though, after costs, the...
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