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."

Comments

Count the seconds...

[davidmcw]

... until the TiVo v's MythTV flamewar begins... for the nth time

Wait, so what was the patent?

[The Warlock]

According to TFA, they hold a patent on watching one show and recording another at the same time?

I dunno about you guys, but I've had a VCR that could do that since before anyone had come up with the name "TiVo".

(And if this case succeeds, you can kiss any open-sourc PVR software goodbye, you know)