TiVo Infringes On Pause Patent

Blackwulf writes: "It seems that there's a company named Pause Technologies which patented in 1992 the ability to pause live TV, play a portion of it, and then skip ahead to live TV. They are now suing TiVo for infringing on their patent. Motorola has already paid licensing fees for their upcoming PVR, and Pause Technologies is speaking with other PVR makers offering licenses to them as well. Yahoo has the story here." Pausing. Obviously, a new idea, and one worthy of patenting. I think I'm going to patent the play button.

Comments

Not a patent on "Pausing"

[Mwongozi]

Come on Hemos, this isn't a patent on pausing. It's a patent on the concept of freezing a live feed and buffering the incoming picture, and then continuing to play a time-delayed picture.

Worthy of a patent, methinks.

Re:Not a patent on "Pausing"

[TheCarp]

Excuse me?

Patents were designed so that you could come up with an idea, sit around with yout thumb up your ass for years until someone else comes up with the idea and actually DOES something with it, then sue them for money?

Funny, and I thought patents were designed to give inventors a limited monopoly to encourage them to publish ideas, rather than keeping them as trade secrets. So you could make money selling your own product, or licensing it to someone who can.

-Steve