SONICblue Sues TiVo for Patent Infringement
SVDave writes "Yesterday, Slashdot reported that SONICblue was going to start negotiating patent licensing with TiVo. It appears that SONICblue has switched strategies: today they've decided to sue TiVo for patent infringement. Given TiVo's patents on PVR technology, I would expect a quick countersuit, though SONICblue claims that ReplayTV does not infringe on any of TiVo's patents."
From what I have looked at, Tivo has patents dealing with the physical hardware and transport of movie files that get recorded to a hard disk.
Replaytv has patents that are pretty similar, but they focus more on the channel guide, and how to record using it.
Tivo submitted their patents on this 8 days before replytv did. They got their patent awarded to them about 6 months prior to when Replaytv got their patents awarded to them.
From what I can see, they are both using each others ideas from the patents, BUT, tivo was there first.
Ah well, im not a lawyer, so I really dont know whos in the right here, but id side with Tivo.
Zeno