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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.
This story is entirely about the jury. A jury can decide a case any which way they like, no matter what the law says (see jury nullification)
+1 to Tivo for manipulating the system.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
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.
I know we all love TiVo and all, but it looks like their patent is on simultaneously watching and recording TV.
You know, like you used to do when you watched one channel and had your VCR record another.
Or like when you watch streaming media in your web browser and it continues to buffer even when you hit "pause".
Basically, this is yet another stupid IP patent (is there another kind?), even if we like the company trying to enforce it.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
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!
You're right about the need for a simple box to time-shift recordings digitally. Yet Tivo is a huge barrier to entry for many low-budget manufacturers. A very close friend of mine is a "famous" importer of Chinese and Taiwanese goods, and he's shown me (in his home), a cheap-brand DVD player with an integrated DVR. The thing worked wonders, and I believe he said the cost would be under $39 to the consumer if it could get through all the patents it violated. I believe it would be even cheaper if the import tariffs were less, too.
With that, think of all the money consumers would save over the coercion-enhanced Tivo and other DVRs. The money you save not padding their pockets means more money you can spend on other things you want -- meaning more jobs created rather than profits enhanced artificially by government force.
I've had a TiVo for nearly as long as you've stated, and I believe that the percentage of people who "just want to have the data in their home" is far higher than most people estimate. I don't want giant media corporations telling me when and where I can watch things; I want to possess the data so I can view it whenever and wherever I desire. Likewise, consider the number of people who purchase DVDs of television series, many of which are still rerunning in syndication today; people do this because they want their own copy.
On the other hand, consider "personal" video recorders that store the content upstream, at the provider's location. They choose when and which content is available. They choose whether you can fast-forward through commercials in it. They choose how many times you can view it, or how long it is available. And, of course, if you cancel your subscription, you lose it all.
No thank you.
Your positions sounds like someone who has never had an innovative idea that you tried to market AND as someone who wants to use other people's ideas freely.
If you have ever gone to big companies with a big innovation that you need them to fund or license, then you would know that patents are vital to your protection. Secrecy only travels so far. How do you market a concept without sharing it?
If you want to convince me that Tivo's patent is too broad and should not be eligible for a patent, I'll listen and I may agree. But the anti-innovation crowd tends to think everything should be free because ideas cannot be owned. Raise the red flag and tell me that I can't own my property either because the earth is owned by all of us. It's anti-capitalistic b.s.
Download your stolen movies and mp3s. Steal technology from little guys trying to carve a niche. Tell yourself that patents stiffle innovation.
Then, when you have your big idea, come crying to someone else about Microsoft stealing it without paying you.
Your positions sounds like someone who has never had an innovative idea that you tried to market AND as someone who wants to use other people's ideas freely.
The opposite is true. For the past 10 years or so I've positioned myself in the Chicago consulting market as the guy who gives away ideas -- many of them. I find that I'd rather have others put the ideas into action so that I can profit from the final product. Google my name (Adam Dada) and you'll find a few magazines I've been quoted in, usually promoting my old main skill: pushing corporations to try new things and regard all competition as healthy.
Some of my businesses have failed, mostly because of irresponsibility. Why should Tivo patent their ideas when I couldn't in most of my businesses? When I opened retail stores, should I have a "protection" over others from copying my store layout and products at a cheaper price? When a plumber enters a market, should his new found technique to fix a leak faster and cheaper be limited only to him? I believe in letting people use their labor as they see fit -- even if it means they're selling themselves too cheaply.
If you have ever gone to big companies with a big innovation that you need them to fund or license, then you would know that patents are vital to your protection. Secrecy only travels so far. How do you market a concept without sharing it?
Just coming up with an idea is not enough to bring it to market. Bringing an idea to market requires many people to implement all sorts of labors to finalize a product. If you can't do it cheaper and faster than the next guy, your idea is likely not ready to be brought to market. Look at all the ridiculous patents on every cell phone that comes out -- every one has a new patent pending. Yet all cell phones are basically alike, so these patents only seem to prevent new people from entering the market.
I've gone to very big companies (again, some can be found through googling me) with ideas, and many of them continue to hire my company to introduce something new to a given market, especially large but stagnant ones. You'd be amazed at how many CEOs will listen to a great idea even if it means their competition will quickly copy it. You'd also be amazed at how many MBAs hate new ideas with new competition -- I believe this is part of the problem. Business school graduates believe in the textbook, entrepreneurs believe in hard work and strong customer service. In the end, having a product means nothing if the customer can not use it to save them money or time over the price they paid.
Then, when you have your big idea, come crying to someone else about Microsoft stealing it without paying you.
Actually, I used run an idea website that has had numerous inventions "stolen" from it and I'm more than happy about it because I can profit from the creations. I must e-mail Google twice a month with a new idea for them to use (not that they have even listened necessarily), and I work hard to get my ideas out without attributing my name to them. I just want emerging markets to take advantage of, leave the coding and technology developing to those who have the desire to bring ideas to fruition. An idea is worthless without all the other parts: marketing, manufacturing, support, production, warehousing, analysis, customer sales, etc. Every piece of the puzzle is more important than the idea itself.
Ain't that the truth.
Go to an online TiVo forum and ask about feeding your TiVo listings from XMLTV rather than subscribing. Bask in the hostility.
Here's a hint: google for "oztivo", "tivocanada", and "service emulator". Learn perl. Then lament the fact that you'd be sued and lynched if you ever told anyone how you did it.
(This is all hypothetical, of course.)
We apologize for the inconvenience.
The problem people are having with patents is that:
a) nearly all of them are too broad
b) nearly all of them are trivial
c) there's no sense of proportion
And my guess is that you're speaking as someone whose ideas have never been squashed by an obviously bogus patent.
The problem we have with a, is that patents cover too much. Even a vaguely similar idea gets covered, and you wind up paying money to someone who had nothing to do with your innovation.
The problem with b is, you come up with some simple product that no one is marketing, and start selling it, only to have the patent holder come knocking for a piece of your action, and surprise surprise the patent office has granted a patent on your idea, even though it was so obvious you wouldn't have even considered patenting it yourself. Furthermore, there's no allowance for independent invention, so even if you got to your idea completely on your own, if you got there a day late that idea belongs to someone else.
The problem with c is, even if the patent covers only a tiny portion of your device, you can be extorted for basically everything. It doesn't come to that, but the patent holder typically will pick up more than a 'fair' share of the profits.
All in all, the patent system is so broken right now, we would be better off without it entirely. Which is not to say that some middle ground position might not be even better.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
There's a lot of talk about patents and I don't like much of it. It's very ideologically driven with little regard for the facts.
The field of economics believes that people respond to incentives. By giving someone a patent on something, you are ensuring that, for a limited time, they are able to secure most of the "social benefit" of that invention less the "social cost" of developing and producing it. For example, let's say that Tivo spent $100 million "inventing" their product - assuming they were truly innovative and that this is an actual invention. Then let's say that it costs $200 to build a Tivo - the cost of the hardware, marketing, labour used in assembly, shipping, the works. Clearly, Tivo can't sell units for $200 and turn a profit - in fact, they can't sell them for $201 and turn a profit unless they sell over 100 million units (which would cover the R&D).
Now, let's say that there aren't copyright laws for a second and that I can load Tivo software on a box I make (which costs me $200 to make) and start selling them. I can sell at a price a lot less than Tivo can because I don't have to recoup R&D costs of $100 million. This is why software patents are a little more tricky. In the real world, I would have to develop an alternative to the Tivo software which would cost me money, but probably less than the $100 million it cost Tivo since I would be duplicating an already existing piece of software which is substantially easier to do.
Looking at more mechanical things, one can easily see how they work and duplicate the design and the "inventing" company goes out of business - sort of.
There are a lot of people who argue that being first to market is enough of an advantage. An economist wouldn't. Yes, being first to market will provide one's company with a good amount of the social benefit of an invention, but not all of it (patents don't give you all either, but more) and so there is less incentive to invent and less invention than is socially beneficial happens.
I hate to use caps, but I must stress this: WITHOUT PATENTS, THERE IS LESS INVENTION THAN THERE SHOULD BE.
So patents do help correct for that market failure, but they also have detrimental effects. The one that bothers me the most is that patents give a monopoly. For the non-economists, monopolies charge higher prices and deliver fewer units because it is more profitable for them to sell fewer at a higher price. Basically, if I can make a pen that everyone wants and I have a patent on it, I might have a choice of selling 1 million units at $10 per pen or 5 million units at $1 per pen - by selling less units, I get double the money! This won't happen in a competitive market because with more firms selling, it becomes more profitable to sell more units because the more the firms, the fewer of those $10 buyers we each get.
Of course, the natural outgrowth of this monopoly pricing is questioning whether companies are able to capture more money than the social benefit through this system because of above market pricing. Maybe.
Then we get into the "standing on top of giants" problem. Patents mean that you can't stand on giants for a period of time (I actually don't know the exact amount of time, but I think it's about 20 years). So patents retard one's ability to build on the inventions of yesterday.
So, patents encourage and discourage innovation, but is that why the majority of people are in favor of them? No. People see them as fair. People have an "I created this, it's mine" mentality. If you invented something, would you want other people ripping it off? If you wrote a song, would you like others passing it off as theirs - or worse, that their version was better? Ideally, you probably would - it would encourage the type of amazing developments that we see with things like the Creative Commons, but you probably won't feel that way and I don't believe in trying to convert people to different philosophies.
In the end, we mig
Your analogy is busted. Someone asking how to use the hardware they purchased independant of the service is different than asking how to get the Tivo service from Tivo the company without paying.