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TiVo vs EchoStar - TiVo Wins

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the set-top-battles dept.

ssuchter writes "A jury just ruled in favor of TiVo in their suit against EchoStar, awarding TiVo $73M of the $87M they asked for. From the article: 'TiVo had sought $87 million in damages from the Dish satellite-TV network in a patent dispute that TiVo lawyers said could be "life or death" for the company that sold the first box for pausing and rewinding live television.'"

6 of 256 comments (clear)

  1. Expected outcome, also expected to be appealed by nsafreak · · Score: 5, Informative

    Well Tivo did win the first trial (or the first battle in the war) but this is far from over. Let's look at a few points: 1) EchoStar posted profits of 1.5 billion for the year 2005. Tivo by contrast hasn't posted any profits and has lost close to half a billion since their inception. So guess who has the bigger pockets? 2) The next court that EchoStar will likely appeal to typically overturns 40% of the lower court rulings 3) Tivo's patent is currently being investigated by the US Patent Office. If they revoke that patent you can pretty much kiss Tivo good bye. It should be interesting to see how this battle continues.

    1. Re:Expected outcome, also expected to be appealed by MagikSlinger · · Score: 4, Informative

      I do feel sorry for TiVO, but on the other hand, can anyone read the TiVO patents and explain in plain english was exactly they patented? Even if it is just a "method and system" for digitizing video onto a hard-disk for random-access playback by the user, it would qualify as a novel invention in my books. It's just that, well... didn't the broadcast industry have that LONG before we did? And the basic idea of pausing live television was also used by television networks for instant replay which even used a hard-disk (but an analog one, if memory serves).

      I just hope TiVO doesn't get greedy and either tries to become a) an honest corporate citizen and tries to make win-win licensing deals with their competitors, or b) realise that the money is in the "bits about bits" and that their real cash cow is the recommendation service and TV guide.

      --
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  2. I have a Dish Network PVR (721)... by MrFrank · · Score: 5, Informative

    ... and it's not a TiVo. It's a VCR that uses disk instead of tape to do it's recording. Yeah you get the benefits of a random access storage medium, so you can watch whil you record and pause, etc.

    But is doesn't have the nice features that TiVo has. I can't record all episodes of a certain show, I can only give it a time to record (and it doesn't auto adjust if a game goed long). I can't tell it to record everything for a certain actor. Amongst other things.

    Now I never used a TiVo, but from what I have been told, the Dish PVR doesn't compete.

  3. Dish had a DVR 1st by Brad1138 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I am surprised that TiVo won this case. Dish network had the 7100/7200 which could pause and record live TV before TiVo's patent. It may have been a piece of shit but it was still first. Obviously Echostars product would improve over time and the similarities of the current models are logical advance in the technologies.

    --
    If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
  4. Some of TIVO's US patents by nebaz · · Score: 4, Informative

    Found on a TiVo press release.

    US Patents

    6,850,691 - Automatic playback overshoot correction system

    6,847,778 - Multimedia Visual Progress Indication System

    6,792,195 - Method and Apparatus Implementing Random Access and Time-Based Functions on a Continuous Stream of Formatted Digital Data (continuation of 6,327,418)

    6,757,906 - Television Viewer Interface System

    They also have exclusive licensing rights to

    5,241,428 - Variable-Delay Video Recorder

    Japanese Patents

    3615486 - Multimedia Time Warping System

    Chinese Patents

    ZL 99804757.0 - Method and Apparatus Implementing Random Access and Time-Based Functions on a Continuous Stream of Formatted Digital Data (see US patent 6,327,418)

    ZL 00805987.X - Data Storage Management and Scheduling System

    This is of March 2005, they may have more since then. Also, if you want to search the text of the US patents, you can start here

    --
    Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
  5. DIdn't have 'time warp' by mgkimsal2 · · Score: 4, Informative

    As a Tivo stockholder, I've been following the trial as closely as I could. The patent focused on what they called the 'time warp' aspect. What came out in testimony was that the original echostar dish stuff could *not* let you watch a prerecorded program *and* simultaneously be recording a new program. It seems this functionality only made its way in to dish products *after* they had access to a Tivo which the Tivo dev team left them during a licensing/partnership meeting. Bad move on Tivo's part to leave equipment in a potential competitor's hands, obviously. What seemed to come out is that it was true the original echostar dish products *didn't* infringe on the Tivo patents, but that's not what they've been selling for a long time - they've been selling products that infringe on the patent.

    So, given that such a large company had a 'similar' product on the market *before* Tivo, and it didn't have anywhere close to the functionality which Tivo patented, it would seem to be that the 'non-obvious' or 'novel' aspects of the patent got a significant boost. If it was such an 'obvious' way of performing this trick, the people with an earlier technology would have indeed developed the 'obvious' technique and used it in their product.

    --
    creation science book