VoloMedia Gets Patent for Podcasting
By Anna Johnson on August 5th, 2009Did you think that just anyone could be a podcaster? Think again, the U.S. Patents Office has granted VoloMedia U.S. Patent 7,568,213 which covers “providing episodic media” including podcasting (whether via RSS or otherwise).
As reported by ReadWriteWeb, VoloMedia CEO Murgesh Navar said VoloMedia has no intentions of suing individual podcasters and instead plans to “work collaboratively with key participants in the industry.”
Hmmm, do I sense a pay-day in seeking to work collaboratively with large, successful podcasting companies or those – such as Apple – that facilitate podcasts?
ReadWriteWeb questions whether VoloMedia can really claim to have invented podcasting or ‘episodic media’ in 2003, since Dave Winer and others were developing the concept in late 2000 and early 2001.
Nevertheless, the U.S. Patent Office is convinced, and apparently the patent goes into great detail about how to facilitate episodic media downloads, including how to synchronize content between mobile devices and PCs.
Given the proliferation of podcasts and podcasting on the one hand, and the expense VoloMedia has no doubt incurred in investing in its patent on the other, it will be interesting to see how VoloMedia will seek to recoup and/or monetize its investment…
Source: Frederic Lardinois, “Company Receives Patent for Podcasting,” ReadWriteWeb, July 29, 2009
