Heard some pair on NPR trying to shake down podcasters for money for having podcasts. They claim that they invented it in the 1990s. Except they didn't have a working protype device (at least from what I heard in the interview). It was pre-ipod then. They fell back to using cassette tapes.
I thought you can't patent an idea, that the patent goes to the first WORKING prototype.
The patent office hasn’t required a working prototype for about 100 years.
I never had a prototype of my patent, nor was there interest in the patent office in seeing one.