Personal Audio LCC is one of the most despised patent trolls in America today. The company, which is more or less a front for a man named Jim Logan, claims to hold the patent for “episodic content.” It does nothing with this patent other than sue anyone who uses anything remotely like this technology, hoping its opponents will quickly agree to settle rather than shell out the legal fees necessary to defend an infringement suit. You may remember Personal Audio from the time it threatened to cripple the entire podcasting industry, like a supervillain, or the episode of The Simpsons where Mr. Burns blocked out the sun to raise everyone’s energy prices.
Anyway, the podcasting suits have been slow-going because, surprise, most podcasters don’t have any money, so Personal Audio decided to go after the big television networks for the way they deliver episodes on their websites. Yesterday, Personal Audio won the first of those lawsuits.
A jury in Marshall, Texas, found the infamous “podcasting patent” was infringed by CBS’s website today and said that the TV network should pay $1.3 million to patent holder Personal Audio LLC.
The verdict form shows the jury found all four claims of the patent infringed, rejecting CBS’ defense that the patent was invalid. [Arstechnica]
This, to be clear, is hooey, and a perfect example of how the patent system is broken. A guy kind of created something twenty years ago that he apparently has no intention of using at all, ever, and is using a slip of paper from the government to hold half of the Internet hostage. It’s insane. Luckily, there’s hope.
Despite the latest Texas jury verdict, court filings show that CBS is still waiting on the outcome of several motions that could lead a judge to declare the patent is invalid as a matter of law. One of these, filed last week, is based on a recent Supreme Court decision called Alice that ruled that an old or abstract idea — like a table of contents — is not eligible for a patent simply because it is carried out on a computer. In recent weeks, judges have used Alice to shred a dozen or so software-related patents. [Gigaom]
If CBS and other defendants can show that Personal Audio’s “episodic content” patent is that kind of old or abstract idea, then they won’t be liable for damages because the patent would be invalid. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has been mounting a similar campaign to invalidate the patent for a while now as well, and in April of this year “the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) found that EFF has a ‘reasonable likelihood’ of prevailing in its challenge.” So, hopefully, this verdict will end up being just a minor setback and we can launch this particular pile of garbage out into space forever in the near future.
