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TiVo Sued for Patent Infringement
IQ had the first notice that TiVo, the Linux-friendly digital video recorder folks have been sued for patent infringement. Gemstar International Group Ltd. (StarSight Telecast Inc.) has filed a patent infringement suit against TiVo in a Califorinia court. They are alleging TiVo "willfully infringed certain Gemstar intellectual property by virtue of TiVo's deployment,
marketing, offers to sell and sale of personalized video recorder devices containing an unlicensed interactive program guide."
(1) a radio scanner that receives cellular.
(2) A copy of Tetris for my NES (made by Tengen, *not* Nintendo).
(3) An early Pioneer DVD player that can have region coding and macrovision disabled from the remote (not even any soldering required).
(4) An LD of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" with the Jessica panty scene still intact.
(5) and 48-12oz cans (2 cases!)of R12 refrigerant for my car's A/C.
(6) A pair of asbestos filled oven mitts.
(7) And a $69 JVC camcorder. Bill Gates picked up the other $400 and I'm not currently subscribed to MSN.
Woohoo! I'm going straight to hell now, eh?
Nope, it's correct. Gemstar has patented basically everything which is obviously neccessary for a useful program guide. Up to and including the idea of highlighting the current selected grid.
Right now gemstar has a stranglehold on the cable industry with regards to program guides. it's evil, and i've been working with it for a bit. now it's more widely known to be evil. I so hope someday people realize that highlighting a grid with the time and program isn't really very clever or non-obvious.
The press release is very vague and if you do a search on StarSight (on everybodies favorite patent claim database) you get too many entires. So if you look for "schedule system" with "starsight" as the asignee, you get only 13. I'll list them here as they appear similar:
4 __
8 __ 6 __ 4 __
8 __ 4 __
8 __
8 __ 4 __
0 __ 1 __ 8 __ 7 __
This one appears interesting because it mentions recording more specifically than the rest:
http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?pn=US0594995
These three are for user interfaces:
http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?pn=US0547926
http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?pn=US0547926
http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?pn=US0580920
These two are for background schedule systems:
http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?pn=US0580860
http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?pn=US0553275
These are for systems with access controls:
http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?pn=US0596974
These are for a schedule information transmission:
http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?pn=US0579019
http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?pn=US0561927
These are just generic:
http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?pn=US0572706
http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?pn=US0535312
http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?pn=US0595968
http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?pn=US0580178
It's kind of annoying to hear about TiVo under fire -- they're probably the largest manufacturers of Linux/PowerPC hardware right now, not that anyone really knows that. I just love knowing that in every Best Buy in the world, there's a PPC box... makes me want a TiVo even more.
;)
I have no idea what this company is actually suing over, but I have this very protective streak when it comes to PPC-based products.
-- haaz.
Some of us complained to the FTC about the fact that they bought both competitors in that market, but the FTC apparently didn't care.
The VideoGuide even offered some functions that worked without the subscription, such as the universal remote. When they shut it down, they started sending "poison packets" to the receivers that rendered them completely non-functional. There was some talk of filing a class-action suit against Gemstar for remotely disabling a purchased product, but nothing ever came of it.
I don't have the actual patent number, but my understanding is that Gemstar has a patent on the concept of a user-controlled on-screen channel grid. For instance, all DSS recievers have to pay these morons money under their patent, as do some of the newer TVs that have a guide built-in.
What's really funny about this is that the on-screen channel guide is pretty much secondary to the TiVo's functionality - they AREN'T being sued over the actual hard-disc-recorder aspects.
Of course, I find many of the web patents equally mystifying. Again, there is ample prior art for the shopping card, e-commerce, and other web techniques in the Minitel system that has been used widely in Europe for many years before e-commerce started to be used in the US.
Reading the patent someone posted, it says TAPE. Tape. You know, magnetized plastic?
In other words, I can't see how this patent can apply. Tivo is not recording the guide, or the programs, to a cassette tape. That's what the patent says.
If you aren't doing what the patent describes, it can't *possibly* apply.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
How is this different than getting a table of links in HTML that will bring up info on what I select? You receive the HTML and tables electronically and then it is rendered by a browser to give literally identical functionality to their guide technology.
Don't leave your mind so open that your brain falls out. Don't close it so much that you cut off the blood.
Needless to say, I cannot comment on the legal aspects of this case, but I can tell you that TiVo is going to do business as usual, and has lawyers who handle this sort of thing.
What I would most like to say is that we are thrilled with the general kind attitude towards TiVo on this forum. We consider the Linux community one of our our greatest assets.
Cheers to all, and thanks again.
Richard Bullwinkle
TiVo Webmaster
For those that don't know and are jumping the gun blaming open source for this patent, their patents basically cover receiving a guide electronically, then rendering it on some piece of equipment, i.e. something the cable company has, your TiVo or ReplayTV box, etc. (I assume ReplayTV is a licensee.) Diva got around this by doing their own rendering and sending the guide as VIDEO. They probably have a patent on this, so I don't know what other course of action you have to transmit guides at this point.
Basically, any schmoe could figure out that TiVo was patenting on Gemstar's technology. I doubt very much the guide rendering they do is the open source part anyway (I've not been following that).
Does anyone know what exact patent is the basis for this lawsuit, since it wasn't mentioned in the news posting? According to the press release it sounds pretty shallow and all-encompassing.
To be honest, it sounds like a revisit of the lawsuit against 3D Realms a few years back by somebody holding a patent on animated sprites moving on a computer screen. =P
Actually, the method Peanut Press is using appears to negate all the concerns I have over encrypted content: You can back up the book, back up the viewer, and you only need a key to unencrypt the book for viewing. If you lose the book, lose the key, etc, they're more than happy to give you a new one; They know who bought what. You can cut and paste from the viewer, so 'fair use' isn't trampled on, and they have viewers for all the platforms that their 'e-book' would be useful on. All in all, a class job. Their offering seems to be a little too sci-fi/business, but then only the truly nerdy/nouveau VC carry a palmtop these days, so I suppose it's called targeting.
.sig: Now legally binding!
This is not without precedent. 14 years ago an independant dairy in Belgium was sued by the French Cheese Coalition for marketing what was at the time branded an "interactive cheese". What happened was this. The cheese would ask the consumer what they liked the most about milk based products, and then assume the properties of the cheese that the person most desired, even if they did not know the name (believe it or not, there are people who cannot properly identify a Brie versus a Stilton, despite each having attributes that are generally favored!).
The FCC had, at the time, offered for sale a license which would allow the use of limited interactivity (a cheese could emulate any one of a group of cheeses in a "family", but not universal cheese emulation) within a 7 mile radius, 4 in larger metropolitan areas. These licenses were obtainable for 4 thousand francs, and available at most government dairy agencies and gas stations. Thus the order of cheese specialization was maintained, despite the increase in cheese technology.
The Belgian Dairy was completely unaware of the existance of these patents, and had reverse engineered a proprietary French cheese to discover the emulation alogrithm. A restraining order was filed not only against the dairy that created the cheese, but to anyone linking to the information. 17 people present in the curdling process were shot in the head.
However, two years ago, this case was settled out of court. Exact terms of the settlement are unknown at this time.
Excuse 2 doesnt work as a lot of inventors can testify after going bannkrupt.
..
See you patent a cool idea as a small group. A big company use it so you complain. They offer to buy it from you for an insulting sum. You refuse and they refuse to license it claiming your patent is probably invalid. You sue them. They sue you back for anything they can think of including every patent vaguely related they own.
So you are forced to go bust or settle out of court. The settlement includes you paying them royalties and them not paying you a penny.
If you stay in business the big company will simply sell for less than you, and if you are annoying they will dump product below cost to remove you for good
That is the patent system. Not quite what its designers had in mind
Alan
These are the same fools who gave us VCR+. There appear to be three Gemstar patents that TiVo touches on:
Video time-shifting apparatus: Allows you to 'rewind' a broadcast channel.
Apparatus and method for channel scanning by theme: Lets you push the 'Sci-Fi' button and only surf through channels you designate as Science Fiction.
System and method for displaying program listings in an interactive electronic program guide: Self explaining.
All are quite broad, and TiVo may have very well stepped in one of them.
.sig: Now legally binding!
They seem to own a whole bunch of Electronic program guide related patents here are the ones I found:
US05630119: System and method for displaying program listings in an interactive electronic program guide
US5870150: Television guide reader and programmer
US5886746: Method for channel scanning
Actually this is interesting. Several weeks ago, I had Ameritech Americast cable installed. I chose it because it had one of those on-screen guides -- scroll through the list, then click to select a channel to view -- and because the picture was a helluva better than the competing cable carrier in town. Americast comes with a pretty nice looking remote control that allows you to switch between the TV and the on-screen guide. Anyway, the rep was in the process of running the cable when I tried the on-screen guide. It popped right up, but instead of popping on the screen with the correct time, the guide was two hours into the future. I said, "What's with this?" Rep explained that Ameritech had been sued by StarSight for infrining on their patented-onscreen menu idea. But instead of Ameritech ditching the menu altogether, they merely rigged it so that when you clicked the on-screen guide it popped up two hours ahead of the current time -- and then you had to hit the 'Rewind' button to get it to pop up with programs for the current time. He agreed with me that it was amazingly annoying but that it was the only way Ameritech could use the on-screen guide and not infringe on the patent. Pretty bizarre -- and pathetic.