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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."
So basically, competition is pretty much grounds for a lawsuit these days. Nice.
SIGFEH
These companies should save their energy, and possibly share resources for the real battle they have yet to face, which is against the networks.
This technology has the potential of becoming as significant and controversial as Napster...
Unfortunately, with all these patents flying around for very basic methods of PVR operation, it really makes creating an open source PVR project an absolute MINEFIELD. Heck, it almost seems like a strategy that is worthy of Microsoft. (Hey! Why isn't anyone suing THEM?)
PVRs are going to become more and more important years down the road. And they're going to mix (or are mixing) with VOD functionality. And Microsoft looks like it wants to make the PVR part of a television/home entertainment hub.
But how the heck can a serious open source PVR project be started in this minefield of a legal environment?
Not necessarily so, they are a blunt tool, if I'm working on an Open Source PVR project, whether it's commercial or not they could wield their patents against me. We've seen it before in terms of MP3 licensing groups on behalf of Fraunhofer, Unisys with LZW licensing for GIF, Dolby threatening an AC3 decoder developer (just the decoder, not encoder), then there's all the Apple TrueType patents hanging over Freetype, non of the above projects are commercial yet they are threatened.
Reflect on this though, and try and keep it in mind when we as a collective group bitch and moan so loudly about software patents.
Typically, at the date a patent is applied for, most of what we consider "prior art" is pretty much bleeding ege and below your general radar. The fact of the matter is that in early R&D phases, many small companies may be working on very similar ideas. I've worked for several of these over the years, and while some had patentable ideas, most didn't bother and simply forged ahead to get the product out the door and into the public hands. From a consumers point of view, that is great! From a companies CFO standpoint? Oh shit.
Anyhow, I'm rambling again. This is a fight in which it seems prudent to take a side. In this case, I only see one champion, and that is TiVo. They cooperate with the hacking community, they use our favorite OS. They don't hide behind a veil of invulnerability (far from it) snd seem to be able to straddle the fence between commercial interests and the public good.
I'm backing TiVo.
Let the two companies fight out their patents between each other. Likely most will be invalidated, as I'm sure the basic one that TiVo was awarded recently will be. After they're done fighting M$ will either buy up the winner (at a lower cost than now) or sic their own legal team on the patents. I'd make a comment on the obvious nature of patents getting approved, but that would be redundant to dozens of other stories posted over the years. In the PVR market there's only going to be two main players. The mains will be one who kiss content producers ass, and the first one to please the consumer. Microsoft is setup to be the first, and TiVo is making sure they are not the second.
I currently own a TiVo, and simply would stop watching commercial TV altogether without some such device, but their recent business activity has stopped me from upgrading my stand alone to a DirecTiVo. I still think SonicBlue should release the software for their boxes open source and make money off the boxes, they're a seriously bottom contender in the market, and free help on the software (it needs it) combined with some penetration would help.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
TiVo and SONICBlue both holding patents on parts of PVR technology... reading the synopsis, I immediately thought of this post from a story on Macromedia and Adobe getting involved in a patent fight:
"I gained a friend in a the large company that I worked for legal dept... Basically the story went like this, when we are sued we look at their portfolio of patents, then look at our portfolio of patents that we have that might cause their products to infringe... Which ever pile is taller gets paid royalties by the other company. That is a defensive patent."
At the time, I called it one of the "stupidest things I've ever read." Now we get something even stupider; patent fights over parts of the same aggregation of technology that is a PVR.
There are two ways for this to end; either both sides kiss, make up, and milk future PVR manufacturers for massive licensing fees, or the resulting patent apocalypse wipes out at least one combatant, severely harms another, and helps to stall future innovation in home video storage technology.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
There are more lawyers in the USA than there are gas pumps. There are more law students in college than are currently in practice. Half of both Congress and the Senate are members of the American Bar Association, as were the previous President and her husband. The winner of the most recent Presidential election studied at Vanderbilt Law School, and the people who gave the Presidency to the other guy were all law graduates.
Won't someone please think of the lawyers!
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Someone on the AVS Tivo board suggested that this may be a gambit by both TIVO and SonicBlue to validate their Patents.
When you think about it, it comes at an odd time (with TIVO being awarded more patents.) This person suggested that SonicBlue would sue TIVO over certain patents, TIVO would countersue, both would settle and cross-license and the patents in question would have precedent in the court system. Both could then turn on MS and demand licensing fees for the validated patents.
Hopefully something like that is happening.
to negotiate the cross license and stipulate to a consent judgment as to validity of each other's patents. Then, armed with the consent decree, they can use the vehicle to support preliminary injunctive relief as against third parties.
Relax, this is just how the game is played. Its the birth of a new enterprise and industry, with a pretty cool and different product that changes the way people enjoy consumer electronics. This is going to set the framework for development, and indeed, will assure at least a pair of effective and worthy competitors poised to beat up on Microsoft when they try to come to play.
At least until Microsoft buys one of them . . .