Glad you covered this! Basically both sides in Congress want to stop it but there is enough money behind the Trolls to keep it going for a while. Harry Reid (& others) refused to allow the anti-Troll bill to the floor because of that cash pipeline.

Love what Carolla is doing...yes, we need a precedent that this kind of patent trolling is no longer as viable (guaranteed low cost strong-arming).

The issue of patent trolling is about as perfect an example as you could want of why the BS canard that "money is speech" is corrupting of the whole system, both parties.

This is why god invented the Declaratory Judgment Act. People don't have to live under a sword of Damocles, waiting for someone to sue them for patent infringement once its sufficiently profitable for them to do so. If Personal Audio, LLC doesn't like it, it's easy enough; they can execute a release waiving any and all claims they have related to podcasting, etc. Something tells me they won't, though, because they're just waiting to find a sucker they can bilk some settlement dollars out of.

Whew!

What really sucks is that these patents get issued in the first place. Audio "episodic content" over the internet shouldn't be patentable. I've seen seemingly ridiculous patent cases uphold when put in front of a jury because the letter of the law favors these trolls. You think this would fail based on "prior art" but have a quick look at the patent from the link there with all the diagrams and jargon and you can start to see how this holds up when put in front of a judge or jury. Carolla should have counted himself lucky and returned the defense fund money.

I don't want them to just kill off the patent troll business, I want everyone who has ever been employed in it to spend the rest of their life in an iron box in the desert.

Putting on my SA view of everything: Isn't this big businesses wielding their advantages and money against the small businesses that actually created and own patents ?

@8, I can't make heads or tails of your meaning (which is which?), but Personal Audio never created jack shit. Instead they bought an incredibly dubious patent that never should have been awarded and are milking it in the court system. They're destroying innovation and value, not creating it. Crap like this is one of the reasons why America's economy no longer creates anything of much use to anyone anymore.

@8 Pretty close. Patent trolling most definitely crushes innovation and injures the economy.

I had two clients sued by these jokers. Though the trolls inevitably bailed, the time suck and stress on a small business was enormous. It cost people their jobs. And one client essentially was forced under the strain to sell out to a larger rival to keep the doors open and the lawyers paid.

Adam Carolla is an abominable jerk and I would never listen to his podcast, but I'm glad he's doing this. He could end up being the Larry Flynt of his generation.

And as much as I hate those trolls, you kind of have to marvel at their perseverance in obtaining a patent in the first place. A patent attorney told me it takes about three years now to get one issued, and and the backlog is so great it has its own Wikipedia entry.

@8 if you're an SA, you must be a really bad one. Or just trolling yourself.

The Personal Audio patent was, originally, for someone reading out magazine articles into a cassette tape that was then mailed to the person. I'm not sure why that was original then, but it certainly shouldn't apply to digital podcasts.

What the fuck is wrong with the patent process that these patents are granted in the first place?

The solution as proposed is the loser of the suit must pay the winner, so that Trolls are disincentivized. Currently, you can "win" your case and still be out over a million in legal fees.

@14, grinding, stressful "production." Examiners have about 9 hours to do a job (one application) that would take a normal person a week. AND the deadlines are statutory, so the time pressure really weighs heavily on you.

For each application, there are several searches of the literature/science. The examiner must read the entire specification and all references submitted (100s of pages). Then he or she has to write a Brief of about 20 pages that explains the laws involved as well as the science pertinent to the case. Now do that 6 times in a "biweek," over and over again. That's with a very diverse docket of about 200 cases to keep track of. I typically worked 60 or 70* hours a week and could barely keep up. I do the same job now at a law firm and I get way more time per case, and my time is more flexible.

None of this is an an excuse to do a bad job, of course, but it does help explain the crappy patents that are issued.

*For a non-attorney trained in the soft sciences, the salary was surprisingly good.

@11: Agreed. The guy is a toad, and the episode of the Savage Lovecast where Dan invited Carolla on is easily the nadir of the entire enterprise. But I'm glad he's using his money and his clout to put the screws to these leeches.