Volomedia has been granted a patent on a “method for providing episodic media content.” In an announcement by VoloMedia the company stated that it now owns the “US patent for podcasting.”
The claim has been acknowledged by Murgesh Navar, the patent’s chief inventor, as controversial.
In a blog post authored by Navar the claim was explained and the short answer is simply because he has been working on it [podcasting] for years. VoloMedia filed its patent in November 2003 which is a year before podcasting was born. The 2008 patent application is a continuance of the previous patent and has been ruled by the USPTO (patent office) as not being in bad faith.
The patent describes the intellectual property as: "The method includes providing a user with a dedicated episodic media channel and receiving a subscription request to the dedicated episodic media channel from the user. Updated episodic media associated with the dedicated episodic media channel is then automatically downloaded to a computing device associated with the user. The download occurs in accordance with the subscription request of the user.
There is little doubt that big industry players will fight the patent or try to get it declared invlid should the patent be broad enough to allow VoloMedia to start chasing them down for royalties and licensing fees.
Source: Ars Technica
Michael Reed
