Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer at
Speaker 1: how stuff Works in love all things tech, and we're
Speaker 1: going to tackle a very special topic to me today.
Speaker 1: So for several years, there was a dark cloud looming
Speaker 1: over the podcast landscape, and the shadow of this cloud
Speaker 1: was affecting many podcasters in different ways, including the podcasts
Speaker 1: from How Stuff Works. So today we're going to explore
Speaker 1: the story of Personal Audio l l C, the patents
Speaker 1: that were at the heart of the issue, and what
Speaker 1: happened as a result. And I've been asked about this
Speaker 1: story many times, and until the matter was actually put
Speaker 1: to rest earlier in two thousand eighteen, I couldn't really
Speaker 1: talk about it. I'll mention more about being put to
Speaker 1: rest in a little bit, but I didn't feel comfortable
Speaker 1: covering the story on my show because How Stuff Works
Speaker 1: is one of the parties specifically named by Personal Audio
Speaker 1: LLC and its complaints, and as an employee of How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works, it would at the very least be unwise
Speaker 1: to comment officially on the matter. I might be seen
Speaker 1: as a real voice of the company, like I was
Speaker 1: representing the company as a whole, and I wouldn't necessarily
Speaker 1: mean that I would just be trying to cover the story.
Speaker 1: I am not the official voice of the company. I
Speaker 1: am given an awful lot of control over my podcast,
Speaker 1: and I do appreciate that. But as we understand, with
Speaker 1: great power comes great something something. As my fictional uncle
Speaker 1: Ben used to tell me before, I would hustle off
Speaker 1: to shoot pictures for the local paper. But now the
Speaker 1: whole matter is closed and I feel I can at
Speaker 1: least give an account of what happened and why it
Speaker 1: took so long to resolve, and I'll try to be
Speaker 1: as objective as possible. So please remember, this was a
Speaker 1: case that had the potential to really affect my career,
Speaker 1: so I am a bit close to it, but I'm
Speaker 1: gonna try and be unbiased. That's also challenging because a
Speaker 1: lot of the outlets that reported on this had a
Speaker 1: very specific perspective on the matter. So let's begin this
Speaker 1: discussion by talking about what patents are, because that's at
Speaker 1: the very heart of the matter. A patent is at
Speaker 1: least a patent like the kind of talking about in
Speaker 1: this episode is essentially a license or similar authorized document
Speaker 1: issued by a government to an applicant for the right
Speaker 1: to make, use, sell, or license out and invention. You
Speaker 1: cannot patent an idea, but you can patent the implementation
Speaker 1: of an idea as long as it meets certain criteria.
Speaker 1: So let's say you've come up with a really cool
Speaker 1: invention that's going to automatically coordinate all your outfits so
Speaker 1: that not only are you fashionable, but you also never
Speaker 1: have to worry about wearing the exact same outfit twice
Speaker 1: because it will keep a track record of everything you've done,
Speaker 1: so it will pair different pieces together to consistently keep
Speaker 1: your look fresh from day to day and fashionable. It's
Speaker 1: not gonna pair two mismatched pieces of clothing together. And
Speaker 1: you feel this invention has real value and you want
Speaker 1: to protect your idea from people who might steal it,
Speaker 1: so you have a couple of different options ahead of you.
Speaker 1: One of those options is you keep your mouth shut
Speaker 1: about how you invented it. You don't explain how it works,
Speaker 1: You create a product, and you go to market. The
Speaker 1: danger of this method is that you don't really have
Speaker 1: any protection for your idea if someone goes out and
Speaker 1: buys your product and then says, I'm going to break
Speaker 1: this down and figure out how this this person did this.
Speaker 1: They reverse engineer your process and they figure out how
Speaker 1: you did it. They could conceivably create a competing product
Speaker 1: of their own and undercut you, and you don't have
Speaker 1: any protection in that case. Or you could apply for
Speaker 1: a patent for your invention. Now, this involves drafting a
Speaker 1: patent application to the respective authority in the United States,
Speaker 1: that's the Patent and Trademark Office. The Patent Office reviews
Speaker 1: your application and assuming your patent appears to be valid
Speaker 1: and presents at least a partly new invention that is
Speaker 1: not obvious, they will most likely approve it. Now, that
Speaker 1: creates a very interesting trade off because, on the one hand,
Speaker 1: your patent is public information. Anyone can pull up your
Speaker 1: patent and read it and see how your invention works
Speaker 1: from a very high level. Most patents use fairly vague
Speaker 1: language so that the intricate details are not on display.
Speaker 1: They give the general process of how an invention works.
Speaker 1: And by the way, you can go to and do
Speaker 1: patent searches online and pull up patents for all sorts
Speaker 1: of stuff and see how it works. It's actually really
Speaker 1: really useful if you're trying to, I don't know, do
Speaker 1: a podcast where you're explaining how tech works. But the
Speaker 1: patent also grants protection. If you find someone using your
Speaker 1: invention and they don't have your permission to do so,
Speaker 1: you can sue them for infringing on your patent. And
Speaker 1: if you can prove that they are using your approach,
Speaker 1: the one that's detailed in your patent, and they don't
Speaker 1: have your permission, you can put a stop to it.
Speaker 1: Even if it turns out that other people have come
Speaker 1: up with the same approach independently after you came up
Speaker 1: with it. If they say, look, we never ever encountered
Speaker 1: your design, you could argue, well, that doesn't matter, because
Speaker 1: I have the patent, and that patent pre dates your
Speaker 1: version of my invention. I own that approach to the invention. Effectively,
Speaker 1: you can choose to license your approach to other people
Speaker 1: if they want to do the same thing, but they
Speaker 1: can't do it without your permission. Now. Current lee in
Speaker 1: the United States patents have a term of twenty years
Speaker 1: from the earliest filing date of the patent application. You
Speaker 1: also have to pay occasional fees to maintain the patent.
Speaker 1: In the United States, like in some countries, it's an
Speaker 1: annual fee, but in the US it's not. In the US,
Speaker 1: you have to pay a fee at three and a
Speaker 1: half years, seven and a half years, and eleven and
Speaker 1: a half years after the patent has been issued, and
Speaker 1: the patent fee increases each time. If the patent holder
Speaker 1: fails to pay the fee, the patent is abandoned and
Speaker 1: the invention is no longer under patent protection. Patent holders
Speaker 1: will often abandon a patent on purpose if the maintenance
Speaker 1: fees exceed the value of the patent itself. If you're saying, well,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be paying x amount, but this is
Speaker 1: worth less than X, it doesn't make sense to keep
Speaker 1: maintaining the patent, you might abandon it. The Patent office
Speaker 1: can take a couple of years to grant patents from
Speaker 1: the moment that they've been applied for. After the HERMA
Speaker 1: protection is up, anyone is free to create inventions based
Speaker 1: off the information in those patents. So twenty years passes
Speaker 1: after the filing of a patent or the rather the
Speaker 1: application for a patent, then anyone can make something and
Speaker 1: you you have no legal recourse to suthe them for
Speaker 1: using your approach because the patent has expired. The general
Speaker 1: logic about this is that you don't stifle innovation. This way.
Speaker 1: Other people can take your idea and they can work
Speaker 1: with it. They can change it up, they can make
Speaker 1: tweaks to it. But the protection gives you two decades
Speaker 1: of a head start, so you have a nice solid
Speaker 1: ground to to start from. Now. Patent holders can make
Speaker 1: money or exploit their inventions in several ways. And when
Speaker 1: we say exploit, and it's not like it's being it's
Speaker 1: not a negative thing. Exploiting in this sense means you're
Speaker 1: just making use of the invention in a way in
Speaker 1: order to profit from it. So patent holders can make
Speaker 1: their inventions and sell them to customers. They could go
Speaker 1: into manufacturing and production. They might license their inventions to
Speaker 1: other parties, which then can go on to exploit those
Speaker 1: inventions and sell them or otherwise profit from them. So
Speaker 1: that makes sense. Let's say you're a small time inventor
Speaker 1: and you've come up with a brilliant invention, but you
Speaker 1: don't really have the capital to start up a whole
Speaker 1: manufacturing system. You might take your idea and license it
Speaker 1: to a different company that does do manufacturing. And that's
Speaker 1: why you can. You can profit from your idea, but
Speaker 1: you don't have to sink in the massive investment to
Speaker 1: go into the actual production. You could even sell your
Speaker 1: patent rights to another party entirely. You just sell them
Speaker 1: the patent and they become the patent holder. It's it's
Speaker 1: like a transference of property, which means the company might
Speaker 1: then go into production, or maybe they just sit on
Speaker 1: the patents and wait and watch, and if anyone else
Speaker 1: tries to make anything that infringes upon that patented invention,
Speaker 1: the patent holder can threaten legal action. They can attempt
Speaker 1: to take the other party to court, often as a
Speaker 1: means to leverage a large settlement from the infringing party. Now,
Speaker 1: many people call this last group of patent holders a
Speaker 1: patent troll, and the argument for doing that, to call
Speaker 1: them a patentrol goes kind of like this. The holder
Speaker 1: of the patent is not actually doing anything useful with
Speaker 1: the invention that the patent covers. Instead, what they're doing
Speaker 1: is effectively acting as a gatekeeper. The patent holder is
Speaker 1: not protecting their inventions so much as they are lying
Speaker 1: in wait to spring a trap. They want other parties
Speaker 1: to use that invention implementation so that they can jump
Speaker 1: in with threats of litigation, so you could argue their
Speaker 1: stifling innovation rather than encouraging it. For many people, it
Speaker 1: seems unfair that a company or inventor could patent a
Speaker 1: really cool invention and then refuse to actually do anything
Speaker 1: productive with it, while preventing anyone else from doing the
Speaker 1: same unless they pay an exorbitant fee. Some folks would
Speaker 1: go so far as to throw the patent holders who
Speaker 1: license their patents to others in that category. I think
Speaker 1: that's going too far. I think there are plenty of
Speaker 1: cases where it's totally legitimate to license out a patent
Speaker 1: to other companies if you are incapable of producing it yourself.
Speaker 1: I think that's totally legit. I think the patent holders
Speaker 1: should get compensation for his or her idea. But I
Speaker 1: do get a little uneasy about companies that hold lots
Speaker 1: of patents but they never do anything with them apart
Speaker 1: from threatened litigation. That does rub me the wrong way.
Speaker 1: I find it rather trollish. Next, I'm going to talk
Speaker 1: about Personal Audio LLC and why many people refer to
Speaker 1: that company as a patent troll. But first, let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break to thank our sponsor. Now, before I
Speaker 1: get too far into this section, let me be clear.
Speaker 1: I am not definitively saying that Personal Audio ll C
Speaker 1: is a patentrol. Lots of other people have done that.
Speaker 1: If you do any research at all on the various
Speaker 1: news outlets that have covered this story, patentrol tends to
Speaker 1: be the phrase most used to describe Personal Audio LLC.
Speaker 1: But I am going to try and step back from that.
Speaker 1: I just want to explain the story as it unfolded
Speaker 1: and let you guys draw your own conclusions, because I
Speaker 1: actually really do think the story is more complicated than
Speaker 1: how it's frequently portrayed. There are critics who said that
Speaker 1: what Personal Audio LLC did was an extortion racket, and
Speaker 1: I think it's actually a little more nuanced than that.
Speaker 1: I think that's not being entirely fair. So let's dial
Speaker 1: this back all the way to nineteen nine six, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, was years before the word podcast was
Speaker 1: a thing. And I can say that authoritatively because podcast
Speaker 1: comes from the word iPod, and the Apple iPod didn't
Speaker 1: hit the market until two thousand one. So this company's
Speaker 1: beginnings pre date the word podcast, if not the general concept.
Speaker 1: More on that in a minute. In nine a guy
Speaker 1: named James Logan got involved in this and made this
Speaker 1: enormous investment to start up a company. Now, Logan had
Speaker 1: previously founded a company called Microtouch Incorporated. He was the
Speaker 1: CEO of that company. He had amassed a you know,
Speaker 1: good fortune. He would remain the CEO of Microtouch until
Speaker 1: two thousand. At that point, another company, three M, would
Speaker 1: acquire micro Touch. Fun side note, by the way, the
Speaker 1: U S Securities and Exchange Commissi or SEC would actually
Speaker 1: file a suit against James Logan alleging charges of insider
Speaker 1: trading back in two thousand three. UH. The charges stated
Speaker 1: that Logan had directed a trust for the benefit of
Speaker 1: his minor children to acquire Microtouch stock, knowing that Microtouch
Speaker 1: was engaged in negotiations with both Tycho International Limited and
Speaker 1: Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing also known as three M, and
Speaker 1: that he was benefiting directly from this where specifically his
Speaker 1: children were. Logan would end up settling this matter out
Speaker 1: of court for more than half a million dollars without
Speaker 1: having to admit or deny the charges anyway. In the
Speaker 1: mid nineties, James Logan says he invested more than a
Speaker 1: million and a half dollars in a new company with
Speaker 1: a couple of co founders, and the company's goal was
Speaker 1: to bring to market a product that would download and
Speaker 1: play customized audio tracks, and as part of the company's
Speaker 1: pursuit of this goal, it filed patent applications regarding the
Speaker 1: business strategy. But in this process, the company concluded there
Speaker 1: would be too difficult and expensive to move forward, and
Speaker 1: they abandoned the plan to make the product, but they
Speaker 1: still held the patents. This would lead Logan to form
Speaker 1: Personal Audio LLC in two thousand nine. It served as
Speaker 1: a holding company and its only purpose was to hold
Speaker 1: onto those patents that were created back in the ninety nineties.
Speaker 1: The company itself is based in Texas, which has led
Speaker 1: many critics to suggest this was a calculated decision because
Speaker 1: Texas courts have a reputation for favoring patent holders. A
Speaker 1: judge in Texas had established some really strict rules to
Speaker 1: keep these patent trials short and to the point, creating
Speaker 1: what was casually known as the rocket docket, and juries
Speaker 1: tended in Texas to side with patent holders more than others,
Speaker 1: so it became such a big issue that in two
Speaker 1: thousand seventeen, a court case caused great upheaval because the
Speaker 1: courts ruled that patent holders would no longer be allowed
Speaker 1: to seek out a friendly court to hear their litigation.
Speaker 1: That this was in the wake of discovering that Eastern
Speaker 1: Texas would hear Thousands of patent infringement cases per year
Speaker 1: were brought to courts by what was called nonpracticing entities.
Speaker 1: That means companies that did not actually produce anything. They
Speaker 1: owned a lot of patents, but that's all they did,
Speaker 1: In other words, patent trolls. According to some critics, one
Speaker 1: of the patents that Personal Audio LLC. Was concerned with
Speaker 1: was titled Audio Program Player Including a Dynamic Program Selection Controller,
Speaker 1: and the abstract for that patent describes the invention like this,
Speaker 1: and this is a long quote, but stick with me.
Speaker 1: An audio program and message distribution system and which a
Speaker 1: host system organizes and transmits program segments to clients subscriber locations.
Speaker 1: The host organizes the program segments by subject matter and
Speaker 1: creates scheduled programming in accordance with preferences associated with each subscriber.
Speaker 1: Program segments are associated with descriptive subject matter segments, and
Speaker 1: the subject matter segments may be used to generate both
Speaker 1: text and audio cataloging presentations. To enable the user to
Speaker 1: more easily identify and select desirable programming, a playback unit
Speaker 1: at the subscriber location reproduces the program segments received from
Speaker 1: the host and includes mechanisms for interactively navigating among the
Speaker 1: program segments. A usage log is compiled to record the
Speaker 1: subscriber's use of the provided program materials, to return data
Speaker 1: to the host for billing, to adaptively modify the subscribers
Speaker 1: preferences based on actual usage, and to send subscriber generated
Speaker 1: comments and requests to the host for processing. Voice input
Speaker 1: and control mechanisms included in the player allow the user
Speaker 1: to perform hands free navigation of the program materials and
Speaker 1: to dictate comments and messages, which are returned to the
Speaker 1: host for retransmission to other subscribers. The program segments sent
Speaker 1: to each subscriber may include advertising materials which the user
Speaker 1: can selectively play to obtain credits against the subscriber fee.
Speaker 1: Parallel audio and text transcript files for at least selected
Speaker 1: programming enable subject matters searching and synchronization of the audio
Speaker 1: and text files. Speech synthesis may be used to convert
Speaker 1: transcript files into audio format. Image files may also be
Speaker 1: transmitted from the server for synchronized playback with the audio programming.
Speaker 1: Now that's a long summary, but that particular thing would
Speaker 1: come into play in two thousand nine when Personal Audio LLC.
Speaker 1: Would bring a lawsuit against Apple for patent infringement. Personal
Speaker 1: Audio would win eight million dollars that effort. Other lawsuits
Speaker 1: against other manufacturers would follow, and you could certainly argue
Speaker 1: that the iPod and playlists and structure that Apple had
Speaker 1: created resembled the proposal in the patent, and that other
Speaker 1: companies that had produced MP three players in their own
Speaker 1: filing systems and organization systems also kind of fell into
Speaker 1: that category. But the patent the company would use to
Speaker 1: go after podcasters was not exactly that same patent. It
Speaker 1: was slightly different. And one of the things about patents
Speaker 1: is that you can actually apply to modify them as
Speaker 1: technology advances. So you could create an invention that depends,
Speaker 1: let's say, on a specific type of media. For example,
Speaker 1: let's say that your invention UH concerns cassette tapes. But
Speaker 1: then later on, as technology advances and you get compact
Speaker 1: discs or you get digital media. You want to update
Speaker 1: your invention. It's following the same sort of invention process,
Speaker 1: but now it's dependent upon a new form of media.
Speaker 1: You can do that. It's subject to the Patent Offices approval,
Speaker 1: but you can win a new patent that covers the
Speaker 1: same approach, but now with a new element, like a
Speaker 1: new in this case new medium. But on the media
Speaker 1: distribution side, this patent was was not focused on a
Speaker 1: model that would resemble subscribing to downloading and listening to
Speaker 1: a podcast with that Apple one and for that the
Speaker 1: patent Personal Audio LLC would use against podcasters and which
Speaker 1: would later get challenged was u S Patent eight million,
Speaker 1: five hundred four, also known as System for Disseminating Media
Speaker 1: Content Representing Episodes in a serialized sequence. Now that patent
Speaker 1: included claims that would more closely tie to podcasting in general.
Speaker 1: These sections focused on the host side of the invention,
Speaker 1: as in the servers on the Internet that would host
Speaker 1: the audio files that listeners would connect to and download
Speaker 1: in order to listen to their shows. This patent was
Speaker 1: granted in two thousand twelve, and as the site i
Speaker 1: P Watchdog would put it, The patent quote claimed a
Speaker 1: media player for acquiring and reproducing media programming files which
Speaker 1: represent episodes in a series of episodes as those episodes
Speaker 1: become available. The media player includes a digital memory at
Speaker 1: communication sport coupled to the Internet for transmitting data requests,
Speaker 1: and an output unit for reproducing the media files that
Speaker 1: would essentially be speakers or headphones. The resulting invention addressed
Speaker 1: a need among Internet radio sources for a more practical
Speaker 1: system of delivering content too interested users on request, rather
Speaker 1: than searching for the radio source via web browser, a
Speaker 1: difficulty which is exacerbated further when while an interested user
Speaker 1: is driving end quote. That would be the patent that
Speaker 1: would be the focus of all the fuss. What fuss?
Speaker 1: I'll explain more in just a moment, but first let's
Speaker 1: take another quick break to thank our sponsor. In two
Speaker 1: thousand thirteen, Personal Audio began to issue warnings to several
Speaker 1: different podcasting organizations, including the Corolla Digital Network, home of
Speaker 1: the Adam Corolla Show. The warnings were all about this
Speaker 1: so called podcasting patent that Personal Audio had received. In
Speaker 1: February twelve, Corolla's company was hit with a lawsuit for
Speaker 1: patent infringement, and he decided to fight the lawsuit rather
Speaker 1: than just settle out of court directly, and he argued
Speaker 1: that the claims in the patent were overly broad and
Speaker 1: the suit was without merit. Around this time, podcasters were
Speaker 1: saying that the notifications sent by a Personal Audio were
Speaker 1: in the realm of extortion because they didn't include the
Speaker 1: demand for a licensing agreement or even a firm amount
Speaker 1: that the company wanted. Those who received the messages said
Speaker 1: it felt more like an implied threat that Personal Audio
Speaker 1: held these patents and was ready to bring them to
Speaker 1: bear in courts, and the podcasters said it felt like
Speaker 1: they were the recipient of a shakedown. On the Personal
Speaker 1: Audio side, the company said that wasn't the case at all.
Speaker 1: They were just trying to protect the rights that they held,
Speaker 1: and people like Logan had invested real money into this
Speaker 1: company and they were eager to get that investment back.
Speaker 1: They didn't produce the product that they wanted to produce,
Speaker 1: but they still had the invention patented and they wanted
Speaker 1: to make profit off their idea. But no one was
Speaker 1: really sure at the time how much money was actually
Speaker 1: in podcasting. It could be hundreds of millions of dollars.
Speaker 1: It could be very little at all. This was the
Speaker 1: time of the wild West in podcasting, and you could
Speaker 1: argue we're still there right now, but podcasting was hardly
Speaker 1: an established medium at this point. Even years later, it's
Speaker 1: still a big question as to how profitable the form
Speaker 1: can be, as different podcasters test out different revenue models.
Speaker 1: But the backlash against Personal Audio LLC was quick, and
Speaker 1: since the targets happened to be podcasters, it was really public.
Speaker 1: The podcasters happen to have audiences that they could talk
Speaker 1: to and did talk to on a regular basis, so
Speaker 1: in the court of public opinion, personal audio had already lost.
Speaker 1: Dave Weiner, a software developer, was instrumental in modifying the
Speaker 1: RSS standard to include a new feature called enclosure, and
Speaker 1: closure would allow an RSS aggregator to grab the address
Speaker 1: of a media file and this is the heart of
Speaker 1: the subscription process. He did this back in two thousand one,
Speaker 1: and he questioned, how could this patent, which was granted
Speaker 1: in two thousand twelve possibly apply to a methodology that
Speaker 1: was more than a decade older. Adam Carolla launched a
Speaker 1: crowdfunding campaign to fight the lawsuit and raised more than
Speaker 1: half a million dollars in the process. However, ultimately he
Speaker 1: decided to settle with Personal Audio out of court for
Speaker 1: undisclosed terms. In fact, the terms were word it in
Speaker 1: such a way that Corolla had a non disclosure agreement.
Speaker 1: He could not share what those terms were or else
Speaker 1: it would invalidate the negotiations on his part. The settlement
Speaker 1: at the time probably made the most sense for Corolla,
Speaker 1: as these lawsuits can be incredibly expensive. Defending against a
Speaker 1: patent infringement suit could cost a couple of million dollars easy.
Speaker 1: Even with the half million he had already raised for
Speaker 1: legal fees, he was still way behind. And in Texas,
Speaker 1: where the lawsuits were filed, patent holders, as I said,
Speaker 1: had a long record of winds juries tended to favor
Speaker 1: them over others. However, by settling, this meant that Personal
Speaker 1: Audio would have the ability to sue others for that
Speaker 1: same sort of infringement, and that included companies like how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works, the one I work for, and at the
Speaker 1: time we were part of Discovery Communications. The Corolla case
Speaker 1: was just one of seven district court cases filed in
Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen that centered on this particular patent. One
Speaker 1: of those cases was again CBS, in which Personal Audio
Speaker 1: argued that quote Several shows podcasted by CBS, including sixty Minutes,
Speaker 1: Tech Talk and Face the Nation, use servers, data storage,
Speaker 1: and other Internet hardware which directly infringe claims of the patent.
Speaker 1: Personal Audio also alleged that CBS is distribution of episodic
Speaker 1: video media for shows such as c s I Crime
Speaker 1: Scene Investigation either literally infringed the band or constituted infringement
Speaker 1: under the doctrine of equivalence. End quote. This quote, by
Speaker 1: the way, is coming again from the website i P Watchdog.
Speaker 1: Then the Electronic Frontier Foundation stepped in or e f F,
Speaker 1: and I've talked about the e f F and other podcasts.
Speaker 1: It's a group dedicated to preserving individual rights and freedoms
Speaker 1: on the Internet, and it frequently wages courtroom battles against
Speaker 1: corporations that sees as encroaching on those ideals, as well
Speaker 1: as government agencies. Does that with those two. Now, since
Speaker 1: Corrol this case did not go to an in court decision,
Speaker 1: there was no precedent set, so the e f F
Speaker 1: filed an Interpartists review or i p R on the
Speaker 1: podcasting patent. This is a way for someone to petition
Speaker 1: the Patent and Trademark Office to re evaluate an already
Speaker 1: issued patent. With a strong enough argument, it is possible
Speaker 1: to have the Patent office decision reversed even after they've
Speaker 1: granted a patent. It's an expedited process that can lead
Speaker 1: to the office invalidating part or all of a patent,
Speaker 1: causing the patent to enter abandoned status. The e f
Speaker 1: F filed this petition on October or in October two
Speaker 1: thousand thirteen, and just to be clear, this effort focused
Speaker 1: on a different argument than the one CBS attempted to
Speaker 1: make in its defense against the earlier lawsuits. CBS would
Speaker 1: lose its lawsuit. The e f F was looking at
Speaker 1: a different part of the patent and arguing that it
Speaker 1: was invalid. They argued that the personal audios patent was
Speaker 1: invalid because there were already pre existing examples of what
Speaker 1: the patent was claiming from UH that that existed from
Speaker 1: other people already by the time the patent had been filed.
Speaker 1: This is what we call prior art. Prior art is
Speaker 1: evidence that the invention in question is already known. That's
Speaker 1: an invalidating quality of an invention. So to get a patent,
Speaker 1: the invention has to be new prior art doesn't have
Speaker 1: to exist physically or commercially. There just has to be
Speaker 1: proof evidence that the idea pre exists the filing of
Speaker 1: the patent, and that was the tactic the e f
Speaker 1: F employed in their case, and specifically they pointed at
Speaker 1: how CNN had made news clips available online and how
Speaker 1: the radio broadcast company CBC had done a similar thing
Speaker 1: with radio programs, and these instances pre dated the nine
Speaker 1: patent application. It wasn't good enough to predate the two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve patent, because the two thousand twelve patent was
Speaker 1: built on top of the patent. They needed to go
Speaker 1: back further than that and say, here's examples of stuff
Speaker 1: that existed before even this idea was put forth. Now,
Speaker 1: these are not the only sources for media that resembled
Speaker 1: what Personal Audio laid out in its patent application. Way
Speaker 1: back in a guy named Carl Malamud launched a show
Speaker 1: called Internet Talk Radio, and he would interview various computer
Speaker 1: experts and offer up the files for downloading later, and
Speaker 1: someone eventually would call it a synchronous radio. We might
Speaker 1: think of it as radio on demand, because you didn't
Speaker 1: have to tune in a specific time to catch the broadcast.
Speaker 1: You could download and listen to it whenever you wanted to.
Speaker 1: This happened three years before Logan had even invested money
Speaker 1: in that initial venture. The e f F successfully argued
Speaker 1: that the claims in the patent were not valid. The
Speaker 1: Patent Trial and Appeal Board decided in two thousand fifteen
Speaker 1: that all the patent claims that the e f had
Speaker 1: challenged were in fact invalid. Personal Audio would appeal this decision,
Speaker 1: and the case ended up going to the federal circuit courts.
Speaker 1: It took two years, but on August seven, two thousand seventeen,
Speaker 1: this appeals court ruled that the previous ruling by the
Speaker 1: Patent Trial and Appeals Board was correct, meaning the patent
Speaker 1: would remain invalid. Specifically, the Federal Circuit found that CNN
Speaker 1: and CBC both had implementations of the technology before the
Speaker 1: filing of the patent, meaning they had in fact established
Speaker 1: prior art, and that, in addition, the claimed invention was
Speaker 1: deemed too obvious. That's another metric you have to meet
Speaker 1: when you patent something not only has doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be new, it cannot be obvious. You also, by the way,
Speaker 1: can't patent stuff like natural phenomena, though that gets kind
Speaker 1: of tricky when you get into stuff like DNA and
Speaker 1: and genetics and stuff like that, but that's a topic
Speaker 1: for another time. Personal Audio then filed a petition to
Speaker 1: have this case heard by the Supreme Court, and on
Speaker 1: May fourteen, two thousand eighteen, the Supreme Court officially denied
Speaker 1: that petition, which meant the Federal Circuit decision would remain final,
Speaker 1: it would stand, it would be the official decision on
Speaker 1: the matter, and it was laid to rest. Now what
Speaker 1: this means is that the claims in that patent that
Speaker 1: relates specifically to the distribution of material in a way
Speaker 1: that we call podcasting no longer have any real meaning.
Speaker 1: There's no validity to them anymore from a legal standpoint
Speaker 1: in the United States. So podcasters do not have to
Speaker 1: pay a royalty or licensing fee to Personal Audio in
Speaker 1: order to maintain operations. For a lot of people in
Speaker 1: the business, this was a huge relief because for many people,
Speaker 1: podcasting is not exactly profitable. Uh, you might be breaking even,
Speaker 1: you might be losing money on it. And if you
Speaker 1: have to pay a loyal royalty fee or a licensing
Speaker 1: fee on top of that. Then you would lose significantly
Speaker 1: more money, so it would be prohibitive for a lot
Speaker 1: of people if that or the case. And like I said,
Speaker 1: I didn't feel comfortable talking about it at all because
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works was a named uh entity in this
Speaker 1: whole process. But now that it's all over, I figured
Speaker 1: I could finish the story. So I hope you guys
Speaker 1: enjoyed that peek back into the history of podcasting and
Speaker 1: the the dispute that could have dramatically changed the way
Speaker 1: podcasting unraveled. It would probably mean that I have a
Speaker 1: totally different career now if in fact it had gone
Speaker 1: another way. So very interesting stuff for me personally. If
Speaker 1: you guys have suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: whether it's a technology, a person, a company, whatever it
Speaker 1: may be, send me an email and let me know.
Speaker 1: The address is tech stuff at how stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com or drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter.
Speaker 1: The handle of both of those is text stuff H
Speaker 1: s W. Don't forget to pop on over to T
Speaker 1: public dot com slash tech stuff. That's t e E
Speaker 1: public dot com slash tech stuff. That's where all our
Speaker 1: merchandise is you can make yourself lousy with tech stuff
Speaker 1: merch and every purchase you make goes to help the show,
Speaker 1: so we greatly appreciate it. Also, don't forget to follow
Speaker 1: us on Instagram and I'll talk to you again really
Speaker 1: soon for more on this and thousands of other topics
Speaker 1: because it how stuff works dot com