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Life or Death for Tivo
CUShane writes "The Washington Post is running an article on the patent case between Tivo and EchoStar regarding Tivo's DVR technology. The article states that Tivo has a better than 70% chance of winning, while a loss would basically doom the company. Is there a possibility that the patent system is working right in this case?" From the article: "TiVo attorney Morgan Chu has been arguing in court that TiVo's inability to turn a profit, despite the popularity of its product, is partially because of EchoStar's infringing on its patent. TiVo co-founder Michael Ramsay testified that he showed EchoStar executives the TiVo product and pursued a licensing deal with them, but that a deal was never struck even though EchoStar began selling its own DVRs that used technology very similar to TiVo's."
...to learn that TiVo hadn't turned a profit yet? I was.
Are there any other popular gadgets (besides blackberry) caught up in stuff like this?
Math is math. Regular expression is regular expression. The tools are there. The future is now.
I had the first Tivo of anyone I knew -- the day I first heard about it I picked one up. It was a great device for its time, but the recent Tivos I've experienced have no shown much improvement. It is my belief that patents stifle innovation, and they allow the patents holders to stick with the status quo longer than open competition would allow. There can be innovation without patents (PDF warning).
For Tivo to say that their livelihood is in a delicate position because of this patent is ridiculous. If they had protected this patent and EchoStar was never able to compete, all it would mean is that Tivo would have left their prices higher than the market would expect, and they'd still not do much to innovate and invent.
In order to bring a product to market, one must look at all sorts of requirements. Marketing, fast competition, consumer need, consumer affordability, and longevity. Not every product will succeed, and many will fail. The great part about failure is that, on a whole, consumers win out in the long run as other people innovate on top of the failure and release a product or service that is financially viable. Nowhere in the system is a patent system necessary, because there will always be people who want to make a product at a lower cost, even at no cost. Look at MythTV for proof, there, as well as any open source success story.
How many times must it be said that patents don't foster creation, they disrupt it. A monopoly is a monopoly, and the worst examples of monopoly are those that exist solely by using the force of government to back them up. In fact, I truly believe that no monopoly can exist without the myriad of government favoritistic laws and regulations that prevent the open competition that is created when restrictions are removed.
Think not of Tivo, think of the consumer that wins out in the end. This is all that matters in a market -- you should not enter a market without having an understanding of what it takes to survive, succeed and surpass your competition. If you think you can win by removing competition from the picture, you're ignoring the basic ideals of freedom that we're supposed to hold so close to our hearts.
I truly believe it is time for Tivo to close up shop. In the next 10 years, the DVR/PVR idea will be gone -- integrated into every bit of electronics we use, up to even cell phones. As bandwidth increases and costs decrease, the need to use a DVR/PVR will be reduced to those who just want to have the data in their home. Tivo (and EchoStar) will find themselves useless fast enough if they think this is a growing market.
20 years is crazy!
What is the duration in other countries?
This page The Optimal Lifetime of a Patent is interesting. They say the lifetime should vary based on a cost/benefit analysis. I would guess that the "optimal term" is closer to 3 years than 20 years for most computer/electronics patents.
Tivo owners are very loyal/rabid about Tivo. I worked at echostar during a bad time in my life, and got dozens of calls about our PVR. Everyone was disappointed or angry that it wasn't a tivo, they wanted tivo, why wasn't it like tivo, etc.
Echostar just needs to play a few hundred of these calls to prove that their PVR is nothing. like. tivo.
If you think the whole Mac/PC beef is religious in nature, try the Tivo/anything else one.
Man, you really need that seminar!
Dont.Fuck.With.My.TiVo.
Actually, TiVo is suing someone else for patent infringement. So.. your tivo is fucking with others.
Tivo has yet to turn a profit and they think this will make a difference? I don't get it.
Latewire
I could create a bicycle using my own patented technology...but that wouldn't give me the right to sue every company making bicycles because they are "similar"...
One would have to use my technology to make the case...
Or every car namufacturer would be in violation of eachother's patents...
Why are people so stupid?
--E--
You're right - I don't think Tivo should be trying to make money based of a subscription model, I think they should price them higher and compete on features. Anybody can download a program guide into Myth for free right now, Tivo should just adopt the same plan and sell better-featured hardware at a higher cost. I know I'd pay it.
1) Software patents. In order for software patents to not grossly stiffle innovation, they need to have a maximum lifespan of 2 years. 100 years ago,
2) Inappropriate patents. Only significantly innovative products should receive patents. Alternately, a "lesser" patent should exist for minor derivative changes with a 1-2 year duration.
The USPTO is over 200 years old (first patent was in 1790). At that time, a 10 to 20 year monopoly on a novel invention was not a bad idea, since a single invention could often go a hundred years and have no derivative works. Shortly after the end of the second world war, it became common to see derivative works withing 5 years. The patent system, intended to promote innovation through guaranteed profit, now has a 70 year history of stiffling it.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
I have started seeing hints of unhappiness about tivo from the fanbase. I'd say Tivo's ipod-like clamp on loyalty is loosening. Your theoretical knowledge might become fashionable should customers decide Tivo's gone bad. Then it becomes necessary to continue using the hardware.
Man, you really need that seminar!
The field of economics believes that people respond to incentives.
This is my chief argument against software and business method patents. In these fields, which are just incredibly dynamic, I don't think that the patents actually do provide an incentive. Inventors would tend to create the same inventions anyway. A patent doesn't increase the value of an invention, but it does concentrate what value is there. I think that the unconcentrated value of inventions in these fields is currently high enough to provide enough of an incentive for invention, publication, and bringing to market. More incentive would be superfluous, and come at a significant cost. These costs should be avoided where they don't actually yield a commensurately greater benefit for the public.
In time, perhaps, these fields will slow down and the added incentives will become useful. For the time being though, I don't think that the pace of inventiveness in either field would slow down one bit if patents were unavailable.
People have an "I created this, it's mine" mentality.
Yeah, that's an obstacle that really needs to be overcome. Patents and copyrights are utilitarian. The issue is what implementation, if any, yields the greatest public benefit. In patents, the benefit can be broken down into parts: encouraging invention, encouraging publication, encouraging coming to market, having the most minimal encumberance on the public possible. Generally you end up trading the last two in order to encourage the first three.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
No, I don't think that Tivo should be allowed to restrict other people from using the same idea of recording television to a hard drive and all that entails, even if I do happen to think that Tivo has the best and coolest implementation, and even if I am worried that they might go belly up if they are not granted such special monopolistic privileges. :(
I am nothing, if not consistent.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
You know...I've wondered why someone hasn't yet figured out the format Tivo uses for their scheduling (I thought they had) and just offer their own scheduling service, and undercut Tivo in price for it.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
To me TiVo is now falling victim to its own stupidity which is locking themselves up with DirecTV instead of trying to simply standardize their "invention" same as DVD and VCR before it. I like the product but I feel no sympathy for TiVo, may they die a rotten death. Which is in fact a pity because if it wasn't for TiVo's time-shifting and my now old box's ability to do a 30-sec skip, I would pretty much toss my TV out the window. But TiVo has done absolutely nothing in recent years to make itself better. Features are being removed to please content providers and software is a pathetic nagware. So instead of buying (can you still?) a new TiVo box or other Sat DVR now, my next project is making my own HTPC with DVR, the way I like it. Yes it will end up much more expensive and due to double compressions, PQ may come down a bit, but I'm tired of the current out-the-box, fuck-the-customer products. TiVo should have simply concentrated on providing a DVR solution that could be implemented by anyone from OEM to Joe Sixpack on his HTPC. License the technology and watch the money flow. Instead a crop of other such solutions pops up and TiVo is left crying like an old whore that no one finds attractive anymore.
In attempts to generate revolving door of revenue, TiVo and others like them try to come up with some locked down standards that although (initially) cool, innovative and desireable, ultimately are doomed to failure. People may buy in and stay even for a pretty long while (partly because of original invenstment and/or lack of alternatives), but when they finally leave, they leave for good. Others may well infringe on TiVo's ideas, they may even have a case against EchoStar, but I hope they lose (too bad it would mean ES win but oh well). All these morons file IP lawsuits in recent years simply to generate some revenue which is dwindling or non-existent even due to their own greed and ineptitude.
Diversification works not only for consumers, it does work for providers and manufacturers, TOO! Get with the program.
Parent post is incredibly ignorant.
It was DirecTV, not TiVo, that severed that relationship. DTV was acquired by Fox Broadcasting, who already owned Sky+ in Europe. Sky+ developed their own DVR. So DTV decided to end the TiVo relationship because they believe they can save money by using their own DVR with in-house software. Combined with the fact that DTV wanted to move to a completely lease-based equipment revenue model, they could not continue to offer a 3rd party box that competes with their own and costs them a per-subscriber fee.
Further, the DirecTiVo was originally quite superior to the standalone TiVo, but that is not the case anymore. While the standalone TiVo has acquired the ability to get service data over the network, transfer shows between rooms and to PCs, play audio, video, and photos off of networked PCs, and have web-based scheduling, the DirecTiVo has barely evolved at all in 7 years. Although it still has higher picture quality due to no digital signal recompression, and it supports dual tuners, it is severely lacking in features now compared to its standalone brethren. (The dual-tuner advantage is also largely negated by the multi-room viewing capability, IMO.)
As soon as the TiVo series 3 is released, it will be the best of both worlds and will leave the DirecTiVo (and the Sky+ derived R15/HR20) in the dust. The Series 3 could never have existed under the rule of DirecTV.