Marc Maron has been a standup comedian for more than 30 years, and the host of the twice-weekly WTF With Marc Maron podcast since 2009. Earlier this year, he got a letter from Personal Audio—which owns five patents that “describe a series of innovations designed to allow consumers to have a personalized audio or video experience using a media-enabled device connected to the Internet”—asserting its patents related to podcasting. And thus began Maron’s introduction to the world of patent assertion entities (PAEs), otherwise known as “patent trolls.”

Maron saw Personal Audio and its founder, Jim Logan, as an existential threat to the community of podcasters. “I got frightened and I got active,” he told CorpCounsel.com. “I started educating myself and figuring out how the hell we were going to fight this and react to this as a community.” That fight has brought in the resources of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the audience he commands via WTF, and the general ability of comedians to project a point of view with passion and humor.

Below is an edited version of Maron’s conversation with CorpCounsel.com Web Editor Brian Glaser.

CorpCounsel.com: How did patent trolls first come to your attention?

Marc Maron: I got a call from my friend Sam who asked me if I got this letter from Personal Audio. I didn’t know what he was talking about, so we went to check the P.O. box. There was this mildly coercive letter suggesting that we were infringing upon a patent and they wanted us to get in touch to discuss licensing the patent. And at that time, I had no idea what a patent troll was. If I had seen that letter and Sam hadn’t told me what it was, I would have thrown it out.

After talking to some other podcasters and doing some research, I found out that this was a real thing that tech companies had to deal with all the time. Once I found out that Adam [Corolla] was being sued [by Personal Audio], I reached out to a bunch of podcasters and said, “Look, we should find out what this is and how we can fight it and how it affects us.”

CC: When most businesses encounter trolls, they go to a lawyer, but you’ve gone to your podcast listeners.