Samiksha Jaiswal (Editor)

Personal Audio LLC (Patent holding company)

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Key people
  
James Logan, Founder

Founded
  
1996

Founder
  
James Logan

Type of business
  
Privately held company

Personal Audio LLC (Patent holding company) personalaudionetwpcontentuploads201306palog

Products
  
Patents 6,199,076 and 7,509,178, and their enforcement

Headquarters
  
Beaumont, Texas, United States

Personal Audio LLC is a Beaumont, Texas-based company that enforces and earns licensing revenue from five patents.

Contents

History

The history of Personal Audio began on October 2, 1996, when James Logan, Daniel F. Goessling and Charles G. Call filed patents 6,199,076, "An audio program and message distribution system in which a host system organizes and transmits program segments to client subscriber locations," and 7,509,178, "An audio program and message distribution system in which a host system organizes and transmits program segments to client subscriber locations." Patent 6,199,076 was granted on March 6, 2001, and 7,509,178 on March 24, 2009. Personal Audio LLC was listed as the assignee.

In 2009, Personal Audio sued Apple for $84 million in damages, was awarded $8 million, and immediately sued Apple for additional devices it claimed were not covered in the original settlement.

Adam Carolla lawsuit

In 2013, Personal Audio filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Lotzi Digital, Inc., producers of The Adam Carolla Show and several other podcasts on the Carolla Digital Network. The suit alleged that owner Adam Carolla and his network of content infringed on Personal Audio's patent 8,112,504.

Using the crowdfunding site FundAnything.com, listeners have contributed more than $475,000 (as of August 2014) to support Carolla throughout the legal proceedings.

Personal Audio dropped the lawsuit July 29, 2014, stating that the defendants were not "making significant money from infringing Personal Audio's patents". However, Carolla countersued, having already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars mounting a defense against claims he deemed unfounded. Among claims sought by the countersuit is a request that the initial patent be invalidated. On August 15, 2014, Carolla and Personal Audio filed a joint motion to dismiss after reaching a settlement, the details of which are confidential, but include a six-week "quiet period" during which neither party could speak to the media. both parties' claims were dropped without prejudice, and as such can be re-filed at a later date.

EFF challenge

On April 10, 2015, based on a challenge by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the United States Patent and Trademark Office revoked five provisions of Personal Audio's podcasting-related patent, 8,112,504.

References

Personal Audio LLC (Patent holding company) Wikipedia