We‘ve written a few times about the patent troll „Personal Audio“ which claims to hold a patent (US Patent 8,112,504) that it says covers podcasting. With this patent it‘s been busy shaking down the creators of a bunch of popular podcasts. The company‘s owner and his lawyer recently asserted (somehow, without laughing) that their patent was „the roadmap“ for podcasting, even though no one involved in the early days of podcasting was even remotely aware of the patent.

It‘s taken some time, but the EFF has been targeting this particular patent, and has now officially challenged the patent seeking to get it invalidated.