EFF has Federal Circuit’s ear in podcast patent win
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has handed civil liberties group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) a patent win.
Yesterday, August 7, the Federal Circuit affirmed a decision made by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) to invalidate a patent focused on podcast technology.
The EFF had requested inter partes review (IPR) of US patent number 8,112,504, called a “System for disseminating media content representing episodes in a serialised sequence”.
It covers a system and apparatus for storing and distributing episodic media files and, according to its owner Personal Audio, is directed to podcast technology.
The EFF requested IPR of claims 31–35, alleging that they are anticipated by an article called “CBC Radio on the Internet: An Experiment in Convergence”, written by Andrew Patrick and others, and a thesis of Charles Compton titled “Internet CNN NEWSROOM: The Design of a Digital Video News Magazine”.
The board granted the EFF’s petition and instituted review on the grounds of anticipation in view of Patrick and obviousness in view of Compton. It found that the claims were anticipated and obvious.
Personal Audio appealed, arguing that the PTAB had “misconstrued several claim terms and misapplied the references, erring in law and fact”.
According to Circuit Judge Pauline Newman, who spoke on behalf of the court, the PTAB constructed two terms.
“Episode” was defined as “a programme segment, represented by one or more media files, which is part of a series of related segments”, and “compilation file” was described as “a file that contains episode information”.
The Federal Circuit concluded that the board’s construction of “episode” was in accordance with the specification and was correct.
It also found no error in the PTAB’s determination that the prior art references disclosed an “updated version of a compilation file”.
“We have considered all of Personal Audio’s arguments, and affirm the PTAB’s conclusion that the challenged claims are anticipated by the Patrick reference, and alternatively that the claims are invalid as obvious in view of the Compton reference,” said the Federal Circuit.
The EFF published a statement the same day, explaining that the decision will “keep podcasting safe from this patent” for now.
“Although we’re happy that this patent is still invalid, Personal Audio could seek review at the US Supreme Court,” said Vera Ranieri, staff attorney at the EFF. “We’ll be there if they do.”
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