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Company Awarded "The Patent For Podcasting"
Chris Albrecht writes "VoloMedia announced today that it has been awarded what it called the 'patent for podcasting.' According to the press announcement, patent number 7,568,213, titled 'Method for Providing Episodic Media,' covers:
'...the fundamental mechanisms of podcasting, including providing consumer subscription to a show, automatically downloading media to a computer, prioritizing downloads, providing users with status indication, deleting episodes, and synchronizing episodes to a portable media device.'"
Was the aptent submitted before iTunes did podcasting?
"VoloMedia, which used be called Podbridge, filed for this particular patent in November 2003 â" a time, Navar said, before it was obvious that people would download episodic content such as podcasts."
Of course, it's crap. I had an ftp server where I created a 'digital diary' once a week for the first 6 months of my sons life, and that was in 1998.
Granted, they where only 2-3 minutes and linked to my 'web diary', but they where down loadable every week.
I hope Apple hands them their ass.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Its related to an application from November 2003. So unless there's a problem with their priority claim - for anything to qualify as prior art it would have to be before November 2003 (and before November 2002 to be really dangerous to the patent at all).
According to the history of podcasting article on wikipedia the system of using RSS for podcasts and the ability to get them onto an iPod was mature and in use by the time this patent was filed, so it would appear that prior art will indeed shut any efforts from VoloMedia to get money from this patent down.
doesn't existing patented technology utilizing their structure (i.e. iTunes) nullify their claim?
I'm not sure I understand your question. You seem to be saying that the existence of a commercially-available infringing product invalidates the patent. But if that were the case, patents would be worthless. To be patentable, your invention has to be new and non-obvious (yes, I know there's more than that, I'm simplifying; this is not legal advice and so forth). It doesn't matter if it infringes another patent, or if somebody else successfully builds your product while your patent is pending, or even if somebody improves on your invention and gets a patent on the improvement. In fact, from a patent-holder's perspective, there's nothing better than to come up with a really brilliant idea, file for a patent, and while it's pending, $MEGACORP makes an infringing product (intentionally or not), spruces it up, and creates a huge market for your invention. Hooray for solvent defendants!
If you want to kill this thing (and I'm not recommending you should---I don't personally care), the best way to do it is to find a document published anywhere in the world before November 2002 (1 year before they filed) that has all the elements of their claims. It doesn't matter what the abstract is, or what the title says, or what's in the specification, or even that the inventor calls it "the podcasting patent." All that matters is the claims. You find a reference that has each and every limitation in the claims, and those claims are dead. Nothing anybody has done since November 2003 matters to these claims, and anything between November 2002 and November 2003 will just provoke litigation over first-to-invent (which is fine for the lawyers, but not so good for anybody else). So I think it's premature to just assume these claims are invalid.
And before people start modding me troll, I'm not saying I'm a fan of patent trolls. I've defended several cases against patent trolls, and there's nothing more frustrating than having to fight a litigious plaintiff with a bad patent. I am saying that there's such a thing as a valid patent (despite what many Slashdotters would like to believe), and even such a thing as a valid computer-related patent, and if you're lucky enough to have one and win a case against a solvent defendant, it's a great day. I don't call "troll" until I've thoroughly reviewed the claims, the allegedly-infringing product, the specification, and the prior art. And nobody has hired me to do that, so I probably won't, because it takes a long time.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
I'm kinda feeling lazy right now, but with a fair amount of patent experience under my belt, I'd say the key limitations of '213 Carhart et al. are in bold below:
Finding the old podcast applications and checking for that particular feature takes a bit of work. If anyone happens to have an old version of AmphetaDesk or Radio UserLand, perhaps they include a feature that would read on indicating channel depth. Remember, the prior art needs either to disclose each and every limitation of the claimed invention, or be combined with additional prior art that fills in the missing pieces, along with a motivating rational for combining the art.
If there is prior art that is slightly different, but the changes are something that are pretty simple, wouldn't that meet the obviousness criteria?
It depends. If the difference is insignificant (e.g., inventor claims a blue button and the prior art indicates a red button, where the color of the button is arbitrary to the invention at hand), then no secondary art needs to be found to teach the insignificant feature. I'm guessing, however, that pretty simple refers to the ease of implementation. Remember that hindsight may not be relied upon. It is easy to add file sizes and track length to an RSS feed, but that has nothing to do with obviousness. To present a case for obviousness (if the bold limitations in my GP post are the ones missing), an ordinary person skilled in the art at the time the invention was made would have needed to combine the channel depth (file size and track length) concept with the podcasting idea. If some reference A about podcasting teaches all the limitations of the claim except for the channel depth, and reference B teaches channel depth in a similar application, and motivation for adding the channel depth can be found, then, and only then, is it an obvious limitation.
I believe that Adam Curry, (former MTV video jockey) [who incidentally registered the MTV.com domain very early on] played a large part in early podcasting, even as far as coining or spreading the adoption of the term, and lending his hand at coding early pre-iTunes aggregators, until passing the ball to more competent coders, and also having a part in persuading Apple to adopt it into iTunes functionality.
http://web.archive.org/web/20021002080332/http://cbc.ca/quirks/archives.htm
Patent was filed in 2003. The Canadian radio show Quirks and Quarks delivered episodic content as far back as 2002.
Also, portable devices were getting episodes of TV shows automatically upon syncronization:
http://digitalcontentproducer.com/news/video_classic_tv_shows/ (article written in 2002, one year prior to the filed patent).
[quote]
The new channel, which has already launched, and will update daily with fresh episodes of more than five classic television shows including Dragnet, Andy Griffith, Beverly Hillbillies, Dick Van Dyke and One Step Beyond. New episodes of each show will rotate daily.
With this new service, fans of classic TV shows can now watch their favorite episodes on their PDA's - delivered daily to enjoy anytime, anywhere. Each weekday, subscribers will receive a new show on the Pocket PC Films-TV channel. Once subscribed, fresh episodes will appear automatically every day when the user synchronizes their handheld device.
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