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TiVo Issued Additional DVR patents
LoadStar writes: "In the never ending war of the DVR's (originally covered by slashdot here (1) and here (2)), TiVo was granted 2
more patents today -- they cover TiVo's 'trick play' features -- 'pause live TV as well
as rewind, fast forward, play, play faster, play slower, and play in reverse' -- all the
features that make a DVR a DVR. Interestingly enough, TiVo also patented 'a simple and
reliable method for connecting TiVo DVRs and other streaming media devices to a network
in the home,' a feature that to my knowlege does not currently exist in TiVo products
without serious hacking. In related news,
SonicBlue announced it would start licensing talks with TiVo,
probably believing that the last set of patents granted to them gave them the ammunition
necessary to get TiVo to cave and pay a royalty."
.. we'd offer to share our knowledge with others to better the human race as a whole.. but who are we kidding?
"Everything we say and do is right." -a mooninite
With the licensing that TIVO is going to ram down every PVR makers throat, it is going to keep the prices of PVRs inflated for may years to come. The hardware and software (Linux) these machines hardly accounts for their current cost. Once I see a PVR cost a reasonable ammount for the hardware I am buying I might buy one. I will be cold and dead before I spend $400 for a 60gb hard drive, a RISC processor and a MPEG2 decoder.
What will likely happen in the licensing talks is that they'll (eventually) cross-license to get access to each other's patents - it happens all the time with 'mature' companies.
After all, a nice profitable duopoly is way better than a prolonged legal battle where the lawyers get everyone's money in the end.
So why do we have patents again? I keep forgetting...
So large companies, like Microsoft, don't use other peoples ideas to create an extremely similar product with one more wizzbang and take the original company out of business (ReplayTV).
Now MS can't remove TiVo, cause they will have to pay a royalty.
Patents are to protect the little people. TiVo is (or was) a little person, and they applied for their patents WHEN they were a little person. This is a patent that is valid in my eyes.
For all of you that ask "Why do we have patents", I'd like you to invent something... then watch a big company make a profit on it while you sit and try to feed your family. The whole idea was made with the right things in mind. Sure the people who work in the patent office are a touch off, but the idea behind patents is not.
If we didn't have patents, you'd be praying for them.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
TiVo came up with a great idea, had lots of people copying them, made a patent and won it. Now they are making money on their idea, work GREAT with the community (even allow the mods, and all the updates, they try and keep the mods in mind), and sell their service very inexpensively. And everyone is complaining?
I'm happy for TiVo (especially, because I'm a proud TiVo owner).
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
What about that "dumbed down PC" that reads swiped cards, or the "dumbed down PC" known as XBox, Nintendo, Playstation, or that "dumbed down PC" that is in your car?
I think the term "specialized computer" may be better used, but everything electronic is a dumbed down computer of some type....
So I don't see the validity of your question...
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
The vast majority of patent cases are fought between the small to mid-sized company against much larger entities. Patents are the vehicle by which small and mid-sized companies --like TiVo--can effectively compete on an equal playing field with their much larger, better capitalized competitors.
It is what drives venture money to support start ups for companies founded by dudes with big ideas, and without which, nobody would ever want to be first to market with a big-R&D project.
Behemoth Microsoft is the perpetual defendant, not plaintiff, in these cases. It is the agile, flexible, upstarts who tend to benefit from the patent system, not the monoliths.
How does a tiny company win entry into the "cross-licensing" wars? That's easy, build some serious incremental inventions that improve the technology, and draft your own patent application. Yes, the newly "big boys" will try, at first, to toss you about -- and yes, they will be able to keep you at bay for awhile. But remember, there will be two companies cross-licensing their patents one against each other. If your technology is any good, the one who deals with you first wins! This means that both have to deal with you and guess what? Your good technology generates opportunity and value.
This is what mid-sized Japanese companies did to American consumer electronics in the 70s through the 80s. You decide for yourself who had the edge, those with the foundation patents, or those with the new technologies covered by blocking patents?
Great companies, big and small can be players --ALWAYS-- if they have: (1) technology and (2) savvy. It is true that cheesy, non-technology contributing companies cannot freeload off of the work of those who went before them and compete against TiVo with only TiVo's technology. The benefit of rewarding people who productize and bring to us the PVR as these guys did far outweighs the social costs of the marginal markups.
TiVos are cheap -- very cheap compared to their value. And they are excellent products that have been far more savvy about and friendly to their hacker communities than other counterparts. They deserve all they can milk form this.
But the actual method that the TiVo developers used to accomplish this isn't. And that is what they are patenting.
And before anyone says that the method IS obvious, remember, in hindsight, everything's pretty obvious.
When I think "patent", images of patent drawings for drill bits are the first association that comes to mind for me... which is the product of a professor who had *scary* levels of experience in the oil industry, but which will serve as a good example in this case.
Patents for drill bits cover *implementation* ideas. Perhaps this patent isn't for a solid bit, but rather one that has three conical rotating parts on sleeve bearings. Perhaps that one isn't for a pure tungsten carbide surface, but rather one that uses tungsten carbide to hold diamond grains in place. Implementation details.
If anyone had tried to patent "getting oil out of the ground" instead, they would have been laughed to death. If you were a tool bit manufacturer, you licensed patented ideas because they were faster, cheaper, or more reliable, not because they were the only way to do the job.
So that's the first problem I have with software patents: they tend to patent the job, not just one way to do it. If your PVR idea uses a fast general purpose CPU instead of a specific MPEG encoder chip, if it uses MPEG-4 instead of MPEG-2, or if it's not even a physical product but instead just a software package you run on your computer with tuner card... well, even if you don't resemble Tivo at all in implementation, you probably fall under their patents for just solving the same problem of "pausing live TV".
The second problem is that they're patenting the obvious. Given the question, "how would you make it possible to pause live TV", exactly what percentage of Slashdot readers do you think would be unable to figure it out? Implementing it would probably be beyond the reach of most of us... but if Tivo were patenting their implementation, I'd expect to see source code in the patent.
Tivo thought of a new market. That's a wonderful thing, but should they be allowed a 17-year monopoly in it because of it?
Tivo doesn't make the patent rules, you (the voter) do. Unfortunately (for them) they still need to play by those rules, which don't favor small companies enough in most cases.
Far from raking in the dough, Tivo is keeping prices low, while losing money. (For the 3 months ended 10/31/2001, revenues were 5,342; after tax earnings were -33,838.)
You would be hard pressed to find a cheaper way of creating a tivo like system, of comparable performance, from commercially available parts. Jumpy video in the window of a crashing pc isn't the same.
Tivo is licensing, so development can and will continue!
The Tivo service has been very unobtrusive to me so far. I'd gladly watch 1 targeted commercial at my convenience a month to help them out.
I've always thought that the "Everything you ever wanted to know about product X channel" would be a great idea. It would be nice to be able to get a real professional sales video about all of the features of that new car that you might want to buy ON DEMAND. Tivo just figured out how to use the DEAD AIR in the middle of the night to make the cost of such a channel acceptable.
I want to be able to select something like:
Product Videos -> Cars -> BMW -> 325 -> (BMW, Car & Driver, Road & Track) and watch 3 videos on the new 325 series at my convenience. I win, BMW wins, and Tivo wins. What's the problem?
Same thing with vacation destinations, digital cameras, etc. Anything where a static page of info just isn't enough.