Another absurd case of patents that would not have been issued, but for the deadly combination of the presumption of validity, the absence of commons sense, and a\u00a0shallow\u00a0search for prior art is the recent patent on podcasting.<\/p>\n
A company called Volomedia just got the Patent Office to grant them such a monopoly. \u00a0The\u00a0Volomedia patent<\/a> covers “a method for providing episodic media.” In this day and age, it is a ridiculously broad patent, covering something that a wide variety of people have been doing for many years. Worse, the EFF warns<\/a>, “…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…”<\/p>\n EFF and the law firm of Howrey, LLP aren\u2019t willing to just sit by and watch: “…This patent could threaten the vibrant community of podcasters and millions of podcast listeners…” \u00a0They want to put a stop to it, but they need your help. \u00a0Read more about this project at: EFF<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Recently, a company called Volomedia got the USPTO to grant them a patent on a method for providing episodic media, thus locking up a monopoly on podcasting. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,17],"tags":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2xROl-1O","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ipmetrics.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ipmetrics.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ipmetrics.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ipmetrics.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ipmetrics.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ipmetrics.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ipmetrics.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ipmetrics.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ipmetrics.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}