Jury finds CBS infringes podcasting patent, awards $1.3M

A lot of complaints about East Texas in here. I&#x27;ve had a few myself since I grew up there. That being said, this isn&#x27;t the only example of gaming the patent&#x2F;courts system. Blaming the jurors for being prototypical dumb hicks that some of them are is fun but misses the point. The real problem is that a tech patent case wound up there to begin with. There is definitely no interesting podcasting or other telecomm technology being invented there (Longview); and that isn&#x27;t the fault of the jurors. These companies set up sham offices in the area to pretend that they belong in the Ninth Circuit court. Fix the courts and you&#x27;ll improve the situation a bit. Of course, the company was predicated on a sham to begin with, so I&#x27;m not sure how you fix <i>that</i>.

So we don&#x27;t do jury trials in criminal cases where the jury can get the crime (96% pleas), but when it is about complex and bullshit IP laws, where even very savvy person will be confused - fire away.<p>Something is very wrong with that system.

This will be appealed until the end of time - all this did was cost CBS more in legal fees. In the intervening years, Personal Audio will use this one win as a stick with which to extort settlements, but that will only be effective against people that can&#x27;t afford to litigate it.<p>These ultimate winner in appellate court after an extremely questionable verdict is usually the last man standing. Since CBS has vastly more resources than Personal Audio, my guess is that CBS will ultimately emerge the &quot;winner,&quot; if you can call spending millions in legal fees &quot;winning&quot;.

God damn it, eastern district of Texas. Please stop ruining America.

EFF&#x27;s statement <a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/09/after-setback-texas-fight-against-podcasting-patent-troll-will-continue" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.eff.org&#x2F;deeplinks&#x2F;2014&#x2F;09&#x2F;after-setback-texas-fi...</a>

The scariest part about these cases is with Trans-Pacific Partnership[1] they set a precedent for not only the United States, but a whole slew of other countries[2].<p>1 - <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Pacific_Partnership#Intellectual_property_provisions" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Trans-Pacific_Partnership#Intel...</a><p>2 - <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Pacific_Partnership#Members_and_Potential_Members" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Trans-Pacific_Partnership#Membe...</a>

If the jurors in that area of the country have a special incentive to keep these trials going, then that should be grounds to move them elsewhere. Local businesses may be benefitting by having the increase in outside revenue due to the influx of legal teams and such.

What a kangaroo court case.<p>&gt; The company made the argument that the &quot;podcasting&quot; patent actually covered &quot;episodic content&quot; transmitted over the Internet, including video content. The patent refers to a &quot;compilation file,&quot; which Personal Audio lawyers say correlates to the HTML webpage that CBS hosts its content at.

I think 1.3 million ends up being an interesting number. The number is small enough that CBS might consider just paying it.<p>However, they are a huge company with alot of lawyers at their disposal. They could chose to fight this without the financial burden that alot of smaller players like Adam Corolla would have had.<p>&gt; Now that its patent has been validated against CBS, Personal Audio will be allowed to move forward with trials against NBC and Fox.<p>This is also interesting. The enemy of my enemy is my friend may come into play here as I&#x27;m sure FOX and NBC don&#x27;t want to go to court.<p>I can see them helping CBS in an appeal with what I think is called an amicus breif&#x2F;curiae on CBS behalf.

Wonder if this trial is partially why the Adam Carolla trial settlement had a quiet period until Sep. 30?

What the hell is wrong with East Texas?<p>Is it the bed and breakfast industry? Do they profit from contingents having to stay local?