Man claims to own patent for podcasts, says podcasters owe him money

[The Buzz]

Buzzy heard this story on NPR this morning and found it fascinating ... and a little terrifying.

(Jim) Logan claims to have invented podcasting, with a company called Personal Audio, back in the mid-90s. He has a patent that he claims covers podcasting that has been recently updated but dates back to Oct. 2, 1996. That means, according to the letter his company sent out, every time someone creates a podcast — and distributes it — that person owes his company money.

Logan says back in the mid-90s, he imagined a personal audio device that could "interact with the Internet and your preferences to pull down, to your personal player, all the personal stuff you wanted to listen to."

"The idea of downloading playlists to your audio player and podcasts are how the world has gotten around to implementing those ideas," says Logan.

Read or listen to the whole story here: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/...n-one-comedian

[universal4]

One of the problems I see with this is:

The idea was, you'd be able to pick from a selection of newspaper and magazine articles, and his company would send you a tape of those articles being read out loud.

So his idea was a service that stole copyrighted works from News Organizations and re-publish them (word-for-word) and make a profit off of other people's work.

At the same time, no one is to steal from him....

Another case of "Do not steal from me while I steal from your neighbor".

Rick
Universal4

[joeyl]

I have the patent for talking rubbish too, so he's in for a fight.

[universal4]

Damn, I wonder if Michael is willing to pay you for all the rubbish some of us dish out.......

And ummmmm.....you think we could pay a smaller licensing fee so that my posts could be exempted......

.....or maybe I could be your affiliate and work it off....

Rick
Universal4