Adam Carolla & Marc Maron Raise Funds to Fight a Patent Troll

Podcasting needs your help. I know, I’ve talked about this before, but a re-visitation isn’t going to hurt anyone. Marc Maron and Adam Carolla were joined Thursday, March 27, by Jimmy Kimmel, Andy Summers from the Police (he was on the podcast too), Dr. Drew Pinsky, and Doug Benson for a legal fundraiser at the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center in California.

Their goal: raising money to fight patent trolls. To date they’ve raised more than $230,000. If you missed the event because, for example, you live on the East Coast like I do, you can still help support the legal defense through Carolla’s Fund Anything Campaign. You can also email LegalDefense@AdamCarolla.com. Here’s a little video he put out.

Some background: In 2013, Carolla was sued by a Texas Federal Court–an area of the country very amenable to dubious patent lawsuits–by a company called Personal Audio LLC. They are claiming ownership of a patent for “the carriage of serialized episodic content” on the internet.  This same company started sniffing around other podcasters, including Maron, earlier this year.

I’m not sure if this patent troll trend is facing extinction. Obama’s talked about it. It certainly has seen its share of media coverage. But typically these guys target big companies. And I can’t say whether their plan was to begin attacking the everyman as Carolla has indicated. But that’s neither here nor there. I just don’t want podcasting to suffer. And no one likes greedy lawyers from Texas.