It's time to be a journalist. I wish I wasn't waiting for a plane in Atlanta. It appears that Personal Audio LLC is suing individual podasters for patent infringement. Personal Audio LLC (often known as a patent troll) won a settlement where they were awarded $8 million dollars from Apple in 2011. That seemed to be about playlists.
On January 7th Civil Action No. 2:13-cv-00014; Adam Corolla's company Ace Broadcasting is being sued over “System for disseminating media content representing episodes in a serialized sequence” patent 8,112,504
On the same day a similar patent was filed against Howstuffworks.com
In looking at the documentation it seems to be more about the player.
Stay tuned….
The whole patent system stinks. Did they have really have a patent on “distribution of episodic media over the internet” since 1996 – and didn’t say anything to anybody this whole time. No… hey, you know we own the technology that your using to distribute your content so stop that… or pay X$ as a license fee. They waited for the industry to grow and for some podcasters to become profitable and now they decide to sue them for unauthorized use of their technology?
Their patent shouldn’t be valid if they didn’t enforce it this whole time. I’m not a judge, lawyer or legal expert… maybe they can do that. But it still stinks.
Patents were designed to protect people who innovate so they can recoup their investment in cash, time and energy for their creations that make the world a better place. But the patent system has become one which discourages innovation by directing resources into the legal system that should be spent on developing new technology, ideas and art.
Podcasting technology should be open source… not owned and controlled by any one entity.
Steve Jobs took a stand against Adobe and their flash technology because he believed that the internet or a significant aspect of the internet shouldn’t be proprietary. He opted for html 5 which is open source, even though the technology wasn’t ready to replace flash. He did this on principle, despite the fact that it hurt the functionality of iOS devices.
The technology behind podcasting is now a significant part of the internet. It shouldn’t be proprietary and should not be owned by anybody. It belongs to all of us. A patent troll should not be allowed to interfere with the distribution of our content.
Wasn’t Volomedia granted a patent that is basically the same thing… and Apple was awarded a podcasting patent recently too.
We’ll have to wait and see how this plays out…
[rant over]
When some one searches for his essential thing, therefore he/she desires to be available that in detail, therefore that
thing is maintained over here.