Slashdot Mirror
TiVo Buys Six New Patents From IBM
Thomas Hawk writes "TiVo reported in an 8-K filing today that on March 31, 2005 they purchased six new patents from IBM. The patents purchased reportedly have to do with audience research and measurement, integration of television signals with internet access, automatic rescheduling of recordings, content screening, enhanced program information search and electronic program guide interface enhancements. For those of you privacy advocates out there you will love Patent No. 5,872,588: Method and apparatus for monitoring audio-visual materials presented to a subscriber. " The link has very little additional information.
Every time I see any sort of list of the things IT companies have pattented, I have to shake my head in wonder. Is it just me, or is half this stuff common sense, not a breakthrough in tecnology. If they can give a pattent for 'enhanced program information search', I am surprised that Google hasn't simply gone through the dictionary and patented a search for every item that has an electrical signal. These things should be features, not patents.
Yes, and IBM is (in)famous for their Silicon Valley tours, where a few lawyers from Armonk show up, let your company know that you're infringing 6-7 patents, and ask you to pony up some cash for "licensing". If you actually spend the money to defend yourself (as I know at least one company has), they'll merely come back later and say, "Oh, you're right, you don't infringe on those 6 patents, you infringe on these other 6 we dug out of our 30,000+ patent portfolio". And the process begins anew. Perfectly legal, and either way your company pays money, so IBM's selling point is "why not just pay us the money to go away?" It's the way of the world, and this smells like one of those fishing trips. Or else TiVo sought out these patents, as they knew they would need them. Right, check, gotcha.
Seems like TiVo are working on keeping ahead of the cable providers who are chasing them down on their market.
If they can keep working on new things to make TiVo more desirable to the consumer, purchases like this will pay off in the long run.
Business Voyeur
My opinion (and probably many others too) is that it is too easy to get a vague patent without ever having the intention to actually implement it. Just sit all day long, figuring out cool stuff that may or may not be possible with todays technology and then file patents. Then, some years later someone spends a lot of time and money and comes up with something that the original patent in some way or another covers, and wham, they have to pay.
I hope there's an alternate universe where IP professionals bitch and moan on an internet bulletin board about how IT professionals are idiots who can't perform their duties.
The problem I have with IP is patents are granted to people who have yet to create an invention. Patents should only be granted to actual, functional devices.
It's like this: just because one might dream of owning a ranch in Montana, doesn't mean one actually holds property there. Yet that is how our current patent system works.
Proverbs 21:19
He said to restrict transfer, not licence... If you want to just come up with the idea and farm it out to some company to produce You can still retain your patent, you just give them explict right to use it.
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
Indirectly, it then also becomes a defense against attacks on Linux.
So, it may actually make sense that IBM would sell these patents outright. They have more utility being used by Tivo than directly by IBM.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
What if I invent something, patent it, but don't have the funds to develop it further? I could make my money by selling the patent to a firm that is able to put in extra resources, and hence be compensated for effort I put into inventing it. Surely that's the reason people are allowed to buy/sell patents.