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16 September 2014Patents

CBS to pay $1.3m over podcast patent

Mass media company CBS Corporation has been told to pay $1.3 million in damages for infringing a controversial patent directed to podcasting technology.

A jury backed Personal Audio, the non-practising entity (NPE) that owns the patent, yesterday (September 15) after a five-day trial at the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division.

Personal Audio had asserted four claims against CBS, all of which the jury said were infringed by a preponderance of evidence.

The 2013 lawsuit targeted more than 40 podcasts available for download, including the programmes CBS Evening News and 60 Minutes.

In yesterday’s decision, the jury also said CBS had failed to prove by “clear and convincing evidence” that any of the patent’s claims are invalid.

The $1.3 million damages award is much less than the reported $7.8 million that Personal Audio was seeking.

A related lawsuit against NBC Universal is still outstanding, although the asserted patent in both cases has been challenged by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) at the US Patent and Trademark Office.

Following the ruling against CBS, staff attorney at the EFF, Daniel Nazer, said the organisation’s inter partes review still stands.

“Our case against Personal Audio is a separate proceeding. And the standards are slightly different in our case (for example, while CBS was required to prove invalidity by ‘clear and convincing’ evidence—a high bar—the standard in our case is simply whether it is more likely than not that the patent is invalid).

“We are also hopeful that the specialised administrative judges at the Patent Office will take a different view of a patent that describes essentially nothing more than an online table of contents,” he said.

This is not the first time Personal Audio has successfully sued a large company for patent infringement. In 2011, Apple was found to infringe another patent and had to pay $8 million in damages.

Personal Audio, founded in 1996, licenses its inventions to companies including Samsung, Motorola and HTC.

Neither CBS nor Personal Audio immediately responded to a request for comment.

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