EFF to help defend against troll with “podcasting patent”—granted in 2012

Patent trolls have gone after some pretty ridiculous things recently. Online shopping carts, scanners, Windows Phone tiles, and yes, rejecting a call and sending it to voicemail.

On Tuesday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation announced that it’s now gearing up to tackle the latest completely absurd troll, which claims to have invented podcasting.

The company in question, Personal Audio LLC, has not sold a product since 1998—it appears to make money entirely by suing companies and compelling them to license its patents. In January 2013, Personal Audio sued a few big-name podcasts, including the Adam Carolla Show and the Stuff You Should Know podcasts.

As Dave Winer, one of podcasting’s co-inventors, wrote Tuesday on Twitter: “How could a patent issued in 2012 cover podcasting, a technology that's been around since 2001?”

Patent 8,112,504 claims to be a “system for disseminating media content representing episodes in a serialized sequence,” or what Personal Audio LLC itself refers to as the “podcast patent.” Despite the patent not having been issued until 2012, the company argues it has a “precursor to podcasting,” which was filed in a different form back in 1996 but then eventually led to this patent. That also probably explains why the ‘504 patent refers to obviously outdated technology like Windows 95 and SLIP/PPP dialup. It cites infrared as “rapidly becoming a standard feature [on PCs]” and Mosaic as a “conventional web browser.”

This isn’t the first time Personal Audio has filed a patent troll lawsuit. Using various other patents, it has gone up against Apple, Samsung, Research in Motion, Motorola, and HTC—and managed to win $8 million against Apple back in 2011.

If you’re a podcaster who has been hit with a letter from Personal Audio, the EFF wants to help.

“We think there are more of you out there than you realize. EFF would like to understand how big the problem is and make sure you’re all in touch with each other,” wrote Julie Samuels, a staff attorney, and the EFF’s Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents. “We can also help you find counsel. If you’ve heard from Personal Audio, please send us an email at podcasting@eff.org.”