
Posts by Charles Duan:
The Inspector General’s Patent Office Report Should Have Considered Patent Quality
September 8, 2016








It doesn’t have to be this way. Scientists and technologists write articles all the time that explain new inventions in clear, understandable ways. In fact, the patent law requires patents to be written in “full, clear, concise, and exact terms.” But as I’ll explain below, patent lawyers have strong motivations to actually make patents hard to read, keeping that knowledge from the public. Well, we’re called Public Knowledge, and we’re fighting that legal establishment and demanding clarity in patents, most recently in a filing submitted today to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

This morning, Ars Technica is running a story on an odd press release by the company Personal Audio LLC. As has been widely reported, Personal Audio is a company whose business is solely to sue other companies over a series of patents purported to cover all podcasting. They brought a patent lawsuit against Adam Corolla’s podcast about a year ago, and in response Carolla raised over $450,000 to fight back.
Now, as Ars reports, Personal Audio is trying to play up a sob story, claiming that they tried to settle the lawsuit, but Corolla refused to accept the settlement, choosing instead to continue fighting. Personal Audio’s press release suggests that Corolla “continues to raise unneeded money” and suspects that he is continuing “a lawsuit that he no longer needs to defend” for publicity reasons, in a seeming attempt to drum up sympathy for a patent assertion entity.
But there is a very good reason why Adam Corolla is fighting a fight he’s already won. Because he hasn’t actually won yet.