Patent Troll: Personal Audio on Podcasting

Personal Audio, LLC is a company that was started in 1996 for the sole purpose of enforcing two podcasting patents. The company also earns licensing revenue from five other patents.

One of the claims filed in Personal Audio's patent includes:
(1) "An audio program and message distribution system in which a host system organized and transmits program segments to client subscriber locations."

These patent trolls have been suing companies like Apple, Samsung, Sandisk, and more for the last decade for infringing on their "podcasting" patent. The issue really hit media in 2013 when Personal Audio started demanding licensing fees from podcasters, including the comedian Adam Carolla and two television networks.

The big problem with Personal Audio is that they don't actually do podcasting - instead, they use their patent to claim infringement and collect payouts!

Finally on April 10, 2015 the USPTO invalidated Personal Audio's claims used to threaten podcasters in a petition for review from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). EFF was able to show that Personal Audio did not invent anything new before it filed its patent proved the prior art in which people have been podcasting for years previously.

Yay for crushing the patent trolls!