On Friday, the United States Patent Office ​trashed key elements of the so-called “podcasting patent,” the result of a series of petitions submitted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation against what the organization describes as a classic case of patent trolling. So ends the first chapter in an ugly saga pitting a Texas holding company against any and all who dare to provide serialized content via the internet.

​To hear the proprietors of Personal Audio, LLC tell it, the birth of podcasting took place in 1996 in the city of Beaumont, Texas. There were no iPods then and acquiring media via the internet was a chore disguised as a novelty, but the “inventors” Jim Logan, Dan Goessling, and Charles Call saw the future: “a mission of offering personalized audio to listeners over the Internet.” The rest is history—except, not really.

More: The US Patent Office Trashes Key Portions of the Infamous ‘Podcasting Patent’