Adam Carolla won’t let Personal Audio drop podcast patent infringement lawsuit | Hacker News Reader

Adam Carolla won’t let Personal Audio drop podcast patent infringement lawsuit

slate.com

101 pointsbennesvig39 comments

Fuck "Personal Audio".

Go Adam. The world needs more people to stand up to bullshit like this. (sorry for the language in this post, this sort of stuff infuriates me).

Go, Adam. "We thought you had more money" is a despicable reason to try to back out of a law suit.

It should be grounds for classification as a vexatious litigant since it clearly indicates that they're not serious about following through with a lawsuit and are just running a shakedown operation.

If you smash my car and I sue you for $10,000 damages, and then I drop the case when I discover that you have no assets, is that vexatious litigation?

If you claim that 20 different people collectively smashed your car window, charge them individually for full damages, and then only decide to charge the ones who have money, is it vexatious?

That sounds like "joint and several liability", a standard legal model.

I don't see why. Lawsuits are expensive, and as a plaintiff, you know you aren't guaranteed to win. So if you discover that your expected recovery (p of victory * the lesser of the expected damages or defendants' assets) is less than the cost of maintaining the suit, why wouldn't you drop it?

Think about the consequences of automatically categorizing such plaintiffs as "vexatious litigants." You would have a bunch of plaintiffs in court who didn't want to be there, wasting their own time, the defendant's time, and the court's time. It seems to me that nobody would benefit from that rule except lawyers. Though if the lawyer is charging a contingent fee, they don't win either. (Of course there is a separate question of how far into the case should a plaintiff be able to drop the suit without forfeiting his right to bring it again later, but there is already a set of pretty fair and commonsense rules about this in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and state procedural rules. http://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/rule_41)

Sure, in this case Personal Audio's attempts to drop the suit might (or might not) be just another symptom of their general sleaziness, but this sort of maneuver is very common in all litigation, both legitimate and sleazy.

I agree. I think the patent system is bonkers, and these trolls are awful, but in general it seems pretty reasonable to only sue a party for damages when that party can feasibly pay the damages.

Adam Carolla is sort of a huge douche though.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/adam-carolla-gay-mafia...

http://www.nerdyfeminist.com/2012/06/douche-bag-of-day-adam-...

You don't have to look very hard to find plenty of other examples.

Aren't the details from the discovery process private? Can one party in a lawsuit use information gleaned during discovery as part of its PR efforts?

From a press release from the patent troll:

"When Personal Audio first began its litigation, it was under the impression that Carolla, the self-proclaimed largest podcaster in the world, as well as certain other podcasters, were making significant money from infringing Personal Audio’s patents. After the parties completed discovery, however, it became clear this was not the case. As a result, Personal Audio began to offer dismissals from the case to the podcasting companies involved, rather than to litigate over the smaller amounts of money at issue."

http://personalaudio.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Carolla-...

No, details from discovery are not private.

But Personal Audio is lying in their press release. They want to drop the case because Carolla is fighting back.

Depends on whether or not there is a Confidentiality/Protective Order in place, and if so, what the terms of such an Order say. Almost every case of this nature would be subject to some sort of Confidentiality/Protective Order. Generally, the parties would be able to designate documents, deposition testimony, etc., as Confidential. Sometimes there are multiple levels of confidentiality baked into one of these orders (for example, a "HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL" designation might mean that only outside counsel can review a produced document).

Generally, documents marked as such must be filed under seal, cannot be disclosed publicly, etc.

Surely Adam Carolla's representatives can release characterizations of the amount of money he's making off podcasting with his permission, regardless of whether or not the details of his podcasting income were subject to discovery or not. The plaintiff would reasonably not be able to release information it sought from the defendant, but the defendant can obviously release his own personal information at will.

People can donate to his legal defense fund at https://fundanything.com/patenttroll?locale=en - it has already raised nearly $500k!

I feel conflicted. I like Adam but I think he is rich enough to not need my help.

He's taking on these assholes for the entire podcasting community. As it says in the article, he doesn't need to fight this anymore. Why should he pay for the entire thing himself?

In his Senate video he says the case post-discovery is costing $100k/month. I'm sure Ace is rich, but 1.2MM/yr to blow on legal fees rich?

Net worth of $15-20MM. Plus, there’s the possibility of these guys being assigned costs.

He may be a little wealthy, but at this point he isn't fighting for himself, he's fighting for podcasters in general.

You're not helping him; you're sticking it to a patent troll.

That may be an end result, but the direct consequence of continuing to support this is that Adam's lawyers make their salary for the year.

For the downvoters: The correct approach is the one being implemented by the EFF. Continuing to fund Adam's lawyers will give you emotional satisfaction, but suing someone who is simply using the patent system as it's intended doesn't fix anything.

Implementing the patent system's own controls is the best approach to repairing this situation until congress decides to take the problems of software patents seriously.

+1. The EFF's attempt to completely invalidate the patent is the correct approach. If the patent is invalidated, then it protects all of us from trolls (at least in the case of podcasting).

Carolla is attempting to completely invalidate the patent through this case. What did you think he was doing?

If he continues his case, all he can get is lawyers fees and a judgement that he does not violate the patent. It doesn't say anything about the actual patent itself.

The EFF approach solves the problem for everyone by having the patent office void the patent due to prior art claims.

Adam's approach inflicts financial pain on the patent holder.

> using the patent system as it's intended

I don't know what your copy of the Constitution says, but mine says:

"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries"

The troll in question is not an inventor, has made no discovery, and is doing nothing to promote the progress of science and useful arts.

Adam is being sued, not doing the suing.

Adam's lawyers who are fighting a patent troll.

What's wrong with his lawyers' getting paid? Sure, they may get paid a lot, but lawyering is actually quite hard, requires grueling hours in a frequently miserable office culture, and typically requires large amounts of educational debt (the average law school grad has debt in the mid $100,000s). Most of my friends are lawyers (and yes, I am too) and I can tell you that very few of them are living fun lives.

I'm not saying they deserve anyone's sympathy. Objectively speaking, of course, most lawyers are doing pretty well (though there's this: http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/19/us/lawyer-suicides/). But I don't see how there's anything wrong with somebody paying their fees. They are earning them, after all.

Previous discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8113757

Good for Adam. These patent trolls are reprehensible. It's hilarious that they want to pull out now that they stand a chance of losing.

The publicity Adam Carolla gets from this case is likely worth more than the legal fees from keeping the case going.

This. I've seen his name in places I never did before.

I do wonder whether Personal Audio has enough money to pay his legal fees, if he wins and gets awarded fees and damages.

I hope he gets punitive damages for their assertion over unpatentable subject material.

That's not exactly how Patent litigation works. The biggest reason that congress can't get a Patent Reform bill through right now is the "fee shifting" changes that have been proposed. As it stands now, there is almost no chance that a prevailing party in a Patent troll lawsuit will get back their legal and discovery fees even if they win. That's the key reason why these Patent trolls exist. If the laws are amended to allow the prevailing party to get back their legal expenses, the majority of these frivolous lawsuits will go away and only patents with substance that can stand the test of the courtroom would survive. That's the main reason why there is a lot of negativity against fee shifting - there are a lot of organizations that have legitimate patents that don't want any form of a 'loss of power' even if it means allowing trolls to run the patent system. Go figure.

Never paid good lawyers, huh? Or just trolling?

I was completely serious. How much do you think the media coverage he's gotten over this would cost if he'd paid for it as an advertisement?

According to another comment on this story, Adam told the Senate his legal fees are $100,000 a month. I'm not sure what else he has going on professionally but I doubt he'll see a big enough rise in podcast subscribers to offset that.

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