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Friday, March 29, 2024

Jury: CBS must pay $1.3 million to Texas company over podcasting patent

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MARSHALL, Texas (Legal Newsline) - A jury has awarded more than $1 million to a Texas company in a lawsuit over its podcasting patent.


The jury, for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, found CBS Corporation infringed on Personal Audio LLC’s U.S. Patent No. 8,112,504.


Personal Audio, based in Beaumont, Texas, was issued the so-called “Podcasting Patent” in February 2012. Formally entitled “Systems for Disseminating Media Content Representing Episodes in a Serialized Sequence,” it covers the company’s innovations in the distribution of serialized online media.


In particular, the ‘504 patent is directed to an audio program and message distribution system in which a host system transmits information regarding episodes to client subscriber locations.


The technique is commonly used in the distribution of podcasts and serialized television shows.


In April 2013, Personal Audio sued CBS for making more than 40 podcasts available for download, including the “CBS Evening News,” “60 Minutes,” “Face the Nation” and “Tech Talk.”


The television network, in its defense, tried pointing to prior art --  information made available to the public in any form before a given date that might be relevant to a patent’s claims of originality -- and the patent’s obviousness, but neither argument held up.


The jury, in its Sept. 15 verdict, found CBS infringed on four different patent claims and awarded Personal Audio $1.3 million.


Neither CBS nor Personal Audio responded to requests for comment.


The Texas company, which won $12 million from Apple in July 2011 for its “Playlist Patent” and has licensing deals with Sirius, Samsung, Motorola and HTC, has a similar lawsuit pending against NBC.


The network, like CBS, makes various podcasts available on its website, including “The Suze Orman Show,” “Hardball with Chris Matthews” and “NBC Nightly News.”


According to its website, Personal Audio was founded in 1996 with the mission of offering personalized audio to listeners via the Internet.


From Legal Newsline: Reach Jessica Karmasek by email at patents@legalnewsline.com.

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