US Supreme Court ends podcast patent case
The US Supreme Court has decided not to review a patent case concerning podcasts, in a win for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
On Monday, May 14, the court denied a petition for certiorari filed by Personal Audio LLC, which originally sued comedian Adam Carolla for patent infringement and was threatening to sue other podcasters. Carolla and Personal Audio later settled the case.
The disputed patent, US number 8,112,504, claimed a “system for disseminating media content” in serialised episodes.
The EFF filed an inter partes review (IPR) challenge against the patent and it was then invalidated in 2015 in light of two earlier publications. One of these related to CNN news clips and the other to CBC online radio broadcasting.
On appeal, in 2017, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed the decision by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB).
In a blog post, Daniel Nazer, senior staff attorney at the EFF, said Personal Audio then argued that the IPR process is unconstitutional, raising arguments “identical to those” presented in the Oil States Energy Services v Greene’s Energy Group case, in which the Supreme Court ruled in April that the IPR is constitutional.
With the Supreme Court denial earlier this week, the PTAB’s decision is now final and the patent claims Personal Audio asserted against podcasters are no longer valid, Nazer confirmed.
“We won this victory with the support of our community,” he said, noting that more than 1,000 people donated to the EFF’s Save Podcasting campaign and “we also asked the public to help us find prior art”.
