Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
What? TiVo has Intellectual Property? All together now, slashdotters (kneejerkers): "TiVo must die!"
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
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
... 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
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.
Actually Replay and Tivo made an agreement a couple of years ago as they both had key patents.
A patent on a bloody idea. Pausing live TV. What's involved in that? A storage device with a write head for recording incoming data and an independently targettable read head. Wow. I'm sure glad they patented that, with ninety three claims of course and a bunch of technobabble, but essentially that.
Does anyone remember when there was at least the polite pretense of patents having to describe a new and non-obvious METHOD?
When I covered a bit of patent law in Electronics we were taught that for a patent to not be overturned, you'd need to be able to take reasonably skilled professionals in the industry and state the same problem and requirements. If they could easily independently invent the device described in the patent, the patent was too obvious.
Tivo is just trying to patent their feature list - making it impossible for anyone to create any device which provides the same functions.
Not SCO like. More RAMBUS like - flagrant abuse of the patent system.
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.