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posted by martyb on Sunday April 12 2015, @06:29AM   Printer-friendly
from the EFF++ dept.

Ars Technica reports that the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has succeeded in invalidating a patent held by Personal Audio LLC, which was claimed to cover podcasting:

The EFF has taken up various tactics to fight against "patent trolls," but its fight against the Personal Audio patent was the first time it crowd-funded a patent challenge. The non-profit asked the public to help it raise $30,000 to file the inter partes review. The campaign touched a nerve, and in short order the EFF collected more than $80,000.

Personal Audio gave up on getting royalties from podcasters in 2014 after a lawsuit against comedian Adam Carolla almost went to trial. Carolla, who has one of the most popular podcasts, rallied his listeners after he was sued by Personal Audio and spoke out against "patent trolls" in Congress. He raised more than $500,000 from his fans, but ultimately settled with the company.

[...] However, the company pushed ahead against television studios, believing that its patent covered "episodic content" that included online video. It took its case against CBS to trial and won $1.3 million.

The EFF v. Personal Audio LLC site has case documents and further details, and there is additional coverage and comment at HackerNews and Techdirt.

From EFF's press release:

"We have a lot to celebrate here," said EFF Staff Attorney Vera Ranieri. "But unfortunately, our work to protect podcasting is not done. Personal Audio continues to seek patents related to podcasting. We will continue to fight for podcasters, and we hope the Patent Office does not give them any more weapons to shake down small podcasters."

 
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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Sunday April 12 2015, @12:52PM

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Sunday April 12 2015, @12:52PM (#169306) Journal

    Well, Monsanto was able to get a patent on naturally grown broccoli. [no-patents-on-seeds.org] Note that this is not for genetically modified broccoli.

    Podcasting clearly has a greater height of invention than broccoli.

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    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
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