Murgesh Navar, founder of Volomedia, has been addressing mounting questions stemming from his company’s recent patent award that covers the technical methods surrounding podcast distribution.  We have organized recent responses from Volomedia, and asked a few questions ourselves.

Here are excerpts from Murgesh’s follow up blog post posted yesterday on Volomedia’s website.:

“I want to clarify our plans and implications as it relates to the patent…the episodic media download “technology” ecosystem needs to become more seamless, more standardized, and more interconnected before it can become a mass medium.”

Volomedia intends to apply the patent toward making “the episodic download ecosystem work, so consumers have a real choice in how they consume any media that is available on the Internet – whether in a web browser at an aggregation site like Hulu, or on a downloaded and portable basis using Apple’s iTunes and iPhone or Microsoft’s Zune,” and use “intellectual property to help drive a standard, using its IP to help define and improve the ecosystem for the benefit of all participants.”

Murgesh was interviewed yesterday by PRI Marketplace (segment begins minute 5.07).  He was quoted:

“Clearly I can tell you categorically we are not trying to stop anybody from creating a podcast or distributing a podcast. That is not our intent, our motivation or even in our selfish interest to do that.”

“We acknowledge we have power because of the patent, but we expect to use that power along with products and technologies to grow the marketplace.”

ADM asked seven questions for Murgesh, and his responses follow:

Q: How do you respond to critics of this recent patent news that there was prior art of the use of podcasting before Volomedia filed the patent?

A: All innovation necessary to make episodic media download really work did not end with the first RSS-wrapped podcast download… and the need for further innovation is not diminished today.  Plenty of room remains for novel and useful ideas to be developed, and, like our announcement yesterday, many of these yet undiscovered ideas will sound obvious in  five or six years when new patents are issued for them.  As a case in point, Apple filed a podcasting patent in June 2005 titled “Techniques and Systems for Supporting Podcasting.” There are some novel podcasting ideas in this application, although podcasting was well underway by the time Apple filed this particular patent. Again, I want to iterate very clearly, the patent claims focus more towards the consumption end of the podcasting value chain, rather than the individual publishers of content using RSS feeds.

Q: Are you planning on litigating to enforce your patent against individuals or networks of podcasters?

A: No, we do not plan on any litigation, which is unpleasant, unproductive, expensive, and time-consuming for all concerned. We only wish to provide products to push podcasters forward in their quest of creating and delivering great content to their audiences. We stand behind them, not in front of them.

Q: You stated that parts of the episodic media download technology ecosystem are perceived by Volomedia to be broken?  Specifically which parts are broken?

A: We live in a digital media world that demands measurability and much of the downloadable media world – due to its asynchronous and/or offline characteristics – is not, which is why VoloMedia developed its iTunes plug-in.  If you can’t measure it, you can’t monetize it…and if you can’t monetize it, you’ll eventually have to stop publishing it. In addition to the analytics problem, consumer discovery and portability of content is still hard, technologies from the different vendors do not inter-operate, the more mature web advertising platforms like DoubleClick are unable to run ad campaigns within downloaded media.

Q: What specific standards is Volomedia interested in advancing?

A: We have participated in the measurement and advertising standards created by ADM. While some of the standards exist, we see a big opportunity for technologies to effectively and consistently measure and track downloaded media.  Our interest ranges across the entire gamut of portable media. Wherever we see an opportunity to make a difference, we will jump in.

Q: Will Volomedia attempt to negotiate with podcast networks to impose technology within systems not currently controlled by Volomedia?

A: We win by the superior performance of our products. Why would we impose our technologies on anyone? Again, the patent claims focus more towards the consumption end of the podcasting value chain, rather than the individual publishers of content using RSS feeds. So podcast networks can use any technology they wish.

Q: Under your company’s strategy, will creators of content receive a gratis license to podcast, and if so, under what circumstances?

A: Podcasters do not need our license to podcast. They are as free as ever to create and distribute podcasts.  See my comment above.

Q: What is Volomedia’s vision of a net benefit for podcasters if your strategy produces results?

A: Currently we mainly serve relatively large publishers with our analytics and advertising products. One day, we hope to extend the reach of our products so that it is meaningful to publishers of all sizes.