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TiVo sues EchoStar for Patent Infringement
jhkoh writes "TiVo has filed a lawsuit against satellite TV provider EchoStar for infringing on its 'Time Warp' patent for DVR time-shifting. TiVo CEO Mike Ramsay adds: 'Our aim here is not to litigate everybody ... but to further advance and seek commercial relationships so that people recognize the value of our intellectual property, and give us fair compensation.'"
So does this mean they'll be taking a SCO approach and be going after whomever inherited ReplayTV and other companies with DVR's on the market? Or even those OSS apps that make your Linux box into a DVR?
It's a shame because I like Tivo alot but saying you're not wanting to litigate people while suing them seems kinda silly.
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
What? TiVo has Intellectual Property? All together now, slashdotters (kneejerkers): "TiVo must die!"
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
For those who can't be bothered reading the article; "The suit, filed in federal district court in Texas, alleges that EchoStar's DVR infringes TiVo's ``Time Warp'' patent, which includes the method used to allow viewers to record one program while watching another and the storage format that supports advanced ``TrickPlay'' capabilities such as pausing live television, rewinding and slow motion." This does not mean that they'll be going after every DVR producer, only those who copied TiVo without adding any thought of their own.
It's about time Slashdot picked up on this. So does this make Tivo a bad guy now? Probably more important though is the effect this might have on the open source time-shifting software out there.
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
Yeah
Everything that makes it to the public domain is always both obvious and trivial. Everytime we hear about a new invention/method, we always go, dang, why didn't we think of that! why? cuz it seems so obvious and trivial.
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
So as prior art did they list the PC?
I'm sure I've managed to rip CDs to the hard drive as the same time I'm playing music. Sure it's audio vs video, but it amounts to the same thing don't it?
Plus, I'm not entirely sure it's valid on the non-obvious point. Not having looked at the details I would say to implement it one could just ensure that the input and output subsections are separated, and then treat them individually. Each end has enough of a memory cache to hold a few (10?) seconds of video, and the hard drive takes turns emptying the input buffer and filling the output buffer from different sections (files) on the disk.
... by Dr. Frankenfurter:
"It's just a step to the left..."
Let's do the time warp again!
Trick Play Patent No. 6,327,418
Time Warp Patent No. 6,233,389
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered. My life is my own.
Hi and color me biased but Charlie Ergen and Echostar built my business only to tear it apart. I was a C-Band dealer for years (Echostar was primary wholsaler) and had a great business only to see them introduce "Dish" that was not available to the dealers that had made them a success.
I have seen the tactics of Ergen purchasing companies and assimilating technology and in some cases reverse engineering IE:Polaroter
Go Go TiVo !!
TG
Time shifting is both obvious and trivial, and hence any patent issued is invalid.
It is neither obvious nor trivial. Tell me who did real-time time shifting of TV shows (including watching the beginning of a show while the end of that same show is still recording) prior to TiVo. You couldn't do that with a VCR, and nobody was using PC's to time-shift at that time (and if they were, they didn't patent that feature - TiVo did).
The fact that it seems obvious and trivial now is a testament to how DVR's have changed our lives. There was nothing obvious or trivial about what they did when they were first invented, and that's the whole point of patents. DVR's are a major advance, an incredible invention, and one of the things that makes them so unique is the very feature TiVo is trying to protect.
All TiVo is asking for is a proper licensing deal, which it seems they're due, and which many other companies have with them already. This is not an SCO-like case. TiVo is not trying to claim something like they invented the hard drive and any device that uses a hard drive violates their copyright. They're saying their business is largely based on a particular feature of a particular device that they did patent before anybody else, and they're just trying to protect that patent and get Echostar to sign a licensing agreement with them, which Echostar should have done in the first place if their legal dept. was paying attention (it's very easy to look up a patent ahead of time). They're not claiming a generic feature of PC's as their own, or of any particular OS, and they're not claiming a patent on something that existed before they did. And they've owned this patent for a long time.
This is the sort of thing patent law was designed for. If you don't like patents in general, then you can argue against it on that position, though TiVo would likely be out of business without it. You can't argue, as I see it, against this specific patent, though. It's a perfectly reasonable sounding patent. Of course, IANAL.
Gimme a break, the first thing I have to say about this, is other companies have been doing this for years, and Tivo waits until now until to sue? It seems to me that Tivo (obviously) knew about this competitor product, and was just sitting around waiting until the competitor's product reached critical mass (with all of the promotions Dish is running, they have been distribution a very large number of these infringing DVRs). Waiting until the competition is firmly committed in their distrobution gives Tivo the largest advantage (READ: Amount of money).
In cases like this where a company waits around to sue until it will make them the most money, rather than suing to protect their property, should have their patents revoked. Patents are only around to protect inventors, not to make the inventor money (that's what the invention is for).
I find that most often I end up learning from necessity, rather than for enjoyment.
So Tivo has patented the idea of recording television using a) a bunch of video codecs they didn't invent, b) a bunch of commodity hardware they didn't invent, and c) the brilliant invention of rewind, fast-forward and get this... pause.
There are many original and non-obvious aspects to the Tivo design. The ability to record television, and (!!!) play it back at the same time, do not count. Give Tivo this one, within five years they'll be claiming patent infringement against anyone who records TV onto a hard-disk.
Incidentally, I remember back when Tivo obtained this patent. A bunch of Slashdot commenters-- with a "RTF(Patent)" attitude similar to yours-- made no effort to conceal their contempt for those of us who thought the patent might affect similar (but non-identical) implementations. IIRC, they made a big deal over the precise details in the claims, and how you would have to infringe upon all of those things to merit a lawsuit. Looks like things aren't quite so rosy.
I liked the idea of Tivo (though not enough to take out a subscription even when they were in business in the UK... I don't watch *that* much TV) but this lawsuit has instantly turned me against them. Claiming IP/patent rights over an *idea* rather than a *technique* is exactly the kind of bullshit thinking that is going to kill off innovation in the West and allow countries like China and India to squash us in the future even as they laugh at our unbelievable stupidity in letting lawyers rule the roost.
Once a company starts bleating about "intellectual property" and issuing lawsuits to protect it rather than actually making a product that people want to buy, then it's doomed. Last I heard, this was a free market. If not enough people want to buy Tivos to keep the company in business, then fuck 'em.
(But in true SCO style, it probably means their share price will rise, so invest now before the company dies its inevitable hideous death!)
Who's the boss of Tivo? Is he going to become the new Darl?
You must think in Russian.
Why are people just randomly allowed to patent doing things? "Tivo's can pause and rewind live TV, so they should be the only legal way to do so." So if the train company patented driving you to work, and i decided to walk, i'd be infringing on their patent and hopefully arrested before arriving to work. Justice is served.
Actually Replay and Tivo made an agreement a couple of years ago as they both had key patents.
Tivo was out in front on this technology and whether or not we like it, the only way that tech companies can innovate and still survive is to defend their intellectual property. They put a lot of work into their system and it's not fair for someone else to come along and steal their ideas.
So, you think that this is a valid patent? TiVo implements a mechanical tape VCR using digital storage and processing, and suddenly an old idea with loads of prior are is patent-worthy?
I like TiVo too, but I think your bias is clouding your reason. Whoever made the first VCR should own this patent, if anyone. Moving an old idea to a new implementation is not patent-worthy, IMHO.
everything in moderation
Yeah, it's valid. The fact that they can play and record simultaniously breaks your tape-based VCR analogy. It's a pretty slick idea. Plus, you don't have to convince me or the other slashdotters, you need to convince the patent office.
explain how I can use one vcr to record one show while I watch a previously taped show?
Or how I can pause live tv without having a tape running constantly 24/7?
Or how I can decide after the fact to record a show after it's already started (assuming that I do it in the first half hour or so)?
Or how I can keep one show for months on a tape while recording around it?
or erasing shows from the middle of the tape while still being able to record shows in the unused spots?
Hmmm??? I didn't think you could...
Don't anthropomorphize computers, they don't like it.
Please - not another 'Tivo is just a VCR' Luddite. :) Tivo's patents (specifically 6,233,389) uniquely describe a process that they were first to bring to market. For example, the patent I cite describes pretty much the entire Tivo experience. It describes using MPEG2 technology to replace the tape mechanism in a VCR. They were the first to patent this and the first to truly bring it to market. They beat Replay devices to the mainstream market and put a friendly face on what is a slightly tricky technology to describe to non-Tivo experienced folks who don't "get it". My wife was incensed when I bought our first Tivo because she thought it was "just a fancy VCR" - now you'd have to pry it out of her cold dead hands!