EFF campaigns to stop patent troll Personal Audio from suing podcast creators NBC, CBS and others

05/31/2013 • EFF

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) launched a campaign yesterday to challenge a patent, filed by Personal Audio, which is being used to sue numerous podcast creators and media companies. The non-profit advocacy group is partnering with a number of lawyers and Harvard’s Cyberlaw Clinic to “bust” a patent that covers the fundamental technology and concept behind podcasting. Filed in February 2012, it references the “system for disseminating media content representing episodes in a serialized sequence” and was used to file infringement lawsuits against a number of high-profile podcasts such as the Adam Carolla Show and HowStuffWorks back in January. “We invented the technology that enables podcasting back in 1996 as part of an effort to develop a portable and personal audio system that would offer users a customized listening experience using content and data downloaded over the Internet,” Charles Call, co-inventor of the patent and a member of Personal Audio said at the ti