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Ask Personal Audio's James Logan About Patents, Playlists, and Podcasts
James Logan founded MicroTouch Systems in the 80s and served on the on the Board of Directors of Andover.net, the company that acquired Slashdot back in 1999, but it is the company he founded in 1996, Personal Audio, that has garnered him much attention recently. Personal Audio sued Apple in 2009 for $84 million, claiming infringement on patents for downloadable playlists. Apple eventually lost the case and a jury ordered them to pay $8 million in damages. More recently, Personal Audio has filed suit against several prominent podcasters claiming that “Personal Audio is the owner of a fundamental patent involving the distribution of podcasts.” The EFF challenged the patents calling the company a patent troll saying, "Patent trolls have been wreaking havoc on innovative companies for some time now." The vice president of licensing for the Texas company counters that the EFF is working for "large companies against a small business and a couple of inventors," adding "Every defendant calls every plaintiff a patent troll. I've heard IBM called a patent troll. It's one of those terms everyone defines differently." Mr. Logan has agreed to answer your questions about his company and his patents. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one question per post.
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Aside from litigation, how is your company using the patents in question?
One definition of a patent troll is someone who uses patents solely for licensing and litigation.
Pursuing the end users of a product which infringes upon one's patent is practically unheard-of. Why have you done so?
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
There don't seem to be many people asking questions, so I'll bite.
What exactly is Personal Audio? Your website is slashdotted, so I can't find what you make or what your business model is. But you claim not to be a patent troll. You're even willing to come to a hive of kneejerking anti-patent-trolls and answer our questions to try and convince us of this. So, if you're not one, why not? What do you make? What do you sell? What do you do?
Everything is better with chainsaws.
Can you explain, in terms I could tell the average person, how your patent is novel enough that anyone who wants to distribute audio over the internet should license it from you? I'd appreciate it if you could address how the distributions of podcasts today widely differs from downloading audio files in 1995 and how your patent help change this.
Suing end users of technology directly? How can you say this is not a patent troll behavior?
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
According to NPR last week, you basically invented books-on-tape, including distribution of same. Given people have been snail mailing messages on tape to each other since at least the '70s (and I know Charles Emerson Winchester III sent and received reel-to-reel tapes with his rich family in M*A*S*H in the 50s, probably reflective of reality) how could people doiing this on the Internet be any differemt? The mass distribution aspect? Seems like a stretch, when it's the equivalent of an audio printing press.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The only business you made with these patents was sending cassette tapes with some recorded articles that were chosen by the customer through the mail. How does this transfer to creating playlists and podcasting? Picking the listening order of sound files I got from the internet doesn't really seem like it should be protected intellectual property. How do you justify what you've done (a failed business in 1995) to justify payment (much much later) from people who had never heard of you or your patents when they made their services/products, and who apparently never tried to patent that process as it seemed too obvious to them?
No, that link you posted to a web comic we've all seen a hundred times is not "obligatory."
Yes. This particular troll isn't the problem. The system that allows people to patent ideas, rather than inventions, is the problem. The notion, however, that taking advantage of a broken system to one's own advantage, even if it hurts everyone else, is blameless? That's crazy. Of course this troll is morally accountable for their actions. But to put it in question form:
Why do you believe you deserve any money in licensing fees at all, when you haven't apparently done any of the work required to produce a product?
Claiming that the EFF is some sort of enforcer working for large companies to beat up small ones is an idea that can only have come from heavy use of hallucinogenic drugs. Which ones does your team take?
What exactly did you invent? I am not asking what general idea you described. I am asking what did you invent?