A company called Volomedia just got the US Patent Office to grant them exclusive rights to patent podcasting. Say what? The Electronic Frontier Foundation is fighting, and is putting out a call for help for all the O.G. podcasters out there. Paging Dave Winer and Adam Curry! Snip:
The Volomedia patent covers "a method for providing episodic media." It's a ridiculously broad patent, covering something that many folks have been doing for many years. Worse, it could create a whole new layer of ongoing costs for podcasters and their listeners. Right now, just about anyone can create their own on-demand talk radio program, earning an audience on the strength of their ideas. But more costs and hassle means that podcasting could go the way of mainstream radio — with only the big guys able to afford an audience. And we'd have a bogus patent to blame.
In order to bust this patent, we are looking for additional "prior art" — or evidence that the podcasting methods described in the patent were already in use before November 19, 2003. In particular, we're looking for written descriptions of methods that allow a user to download pre-programmed episodic media like audio files or video files from a remote publisher, with the download occurring after the user subscribes to the episodes, and with the user continuing to automatically receive new episodes. You can read the entire prior art request here, and if you have something that could help, please send it to podcasting_priorart@eff.org or fill out the form on our Volomedia page.
EFF Tackles Bogus Podcasting Patent – And We Need Your Help (thanks Peter Kirn)
