Podcasters, you can now engage in your lengthy Maron opens without the feel of being legally targeted by a Texas company that many would consider to be a patent troll.
On Monday, the Supreme Court of the United States declined to hear the case of . In short, the case is all said and done.
As Ars reported in August 2017, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed the April 2015 review (IPR) ruling—a process that allows anyone to challenge a patent’s validity at the US Patent and Trademark Office.
Back in 2013, Personal Audio began sending legal demand letters to numerous podcasters and companies, like Samsung, in an apparent attempt to cajole them into a licensing deal lest they be slapped with a lawsuit. (Some of those efforts were successful: in August 2014, Adam Carolla raised about $500,000 as part of a possible legal defense fund. Carolla settled with Personal Audio, but it’s unclear how much money, if any, changed hands.)
As Personal Audio began to gain more public attention, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, however, stepped in to challenge Personal Audio’s US Patent No. 8,112,504. That patent describes a “system for disseminating media content representing episodes in a serialized sequence.”
Personal Audio did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment on Monday afternoon.
