A company called VoloMedia announced yesterday that they have been awarded a U.S. Patent for podcasting.  The referenced patent was issued on July 28, 2009, and is titled Method for Providing Episodic Media Content.

In the press release, VoloMedia explains that although today’s podcasting is currently 100% RSS-based, their newly awarded patent covers all episodic media downloads, covering endless potential technological advances in the future for episodic media content.  While they claim a desire to continue to work collaboratively with key participants in the industry, the press release carries an undercurrent of warning to uncooperative players.  Specifically the wording “we would expect new entrants into the podcasting arena to have a collaborative relationship with VoloMedia.”   Watch out Hulu, they specifically pinpoint you as a possible future infringer!

In addition, the press release mentions this is just a first in a series of expected patents VoloMedia anticipates in their issuance pipeline.  It will be interesting to see what comes out next.

Microsoft managed to land a patent grant for emotiflags this past week despite well-known prior usage.  The IP team member at Microsoft who received the Notice of Allowance sent a blast email including a  :)

Lotus notes users, however, responded to the news with a  :(

Although it sounds like a parody of the likes of Despair.com, this patent news is actually a real occurrence.  One can’t be sure what the USTPO was emoting at the time of allowance.

Read more here.

Breaking report from ZatzNotFunny! reveals the recent filing by TiVo seeking $1 billion in contempt sanctions from DISH/EchoStar in the patent dispute involving DVR technology.  Last fall, EchoStar announced they were finally going to pay up the $104 million jury award to TiVo since the Supreme Court denied their petition for certiorari.  The contempt sanctions now sought stem from the injunction granted against EchoStar and the infringing DVRs.  Think EchoStar wants to hit rewind?

Sun Microsystems, Inc. was awarded a patent issuance on U.S. Patent 7,559,085 on July 7, 2009, for a method and system of detecting deceptively similar domain names.  Watch out DN spoofers! You may be added to a table in a system.

(hat tip: domainnamewire.com)

As mentioned in yesterday’s post, Apple recently filed three new patent applications leading to rumors of iPhone 4G features.  Here is the patent application related to haptic feedback technology.  For more on haptics, see this Wiki entry.