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TiVo vs EchoStar - TiVo Wins
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.'"
Good to hear an innovative company is able to have its patent respected...
Bad thing is, the lifespan on a patent will probably make that what is right now good news, later becomes bad news
No sig for the moment.
If EchoStar's lawyers argued the case with lines like:
"I don't think 190,000 people would have bought this particular toy if they could have gotten it free from their cable company."
no wonder they lost. I think that was TiVo's point, free boxes from the cable companies ( if you want to call subsidized by higher cable rates "free") cost Tivo sales.
You miss the point. First off, the jury ruled the infringement was knowingly done, ie, deliberate, so the judge could triple the damages awarded to TiVo.
But it's not about one settlement from Dish/Echostar. TiVo will make much more money licensing its patents, and selling its software and services. Five years down the road and the money TiVo will be making in new business will make this award money look like chickenfeed. It's about getting TiVo's patents enforced, and getting cable companies and satellite companies to do business with TiVo. It's the legal decision that matters, not the size of the monetary award.
This was one patent I wanted to be upheld. Tivo put a lot of work into getting DVR's off the ground, and the have a rabid fanbase but almost nothing to show for it. Tivo makes a great product, I'm glad they won the first round and hope that this is the start of really good things for the company. As someone who has used the knock off's they sure didn't do a good job knocking them off, their product sucks. That said - I know a few people who absolutely love my tivo's but are content just getting by with the cable companies DVR because it only costs $6/month, which is exactly what this lawsuit is about. Sure did make my purchase of stocks last Friday pay off :)
On the one hand I'm happy to see a company that created a truly new product be rewarded.
On the other hand I'm not sure that what TiVO did wasn't obvious. Using a HD rather than a videotape was surely obvious and automating the process of recording shows is not only obvious but far from original. All TiVO did is put both of these things together in a convient package and I find it hard to formulate any principled rule that would call TiVO's developments non-obvious but NPT's blackberry patent obvious.
The difference seems only to be that geeks like TiVO and TiVO hasn't being suing individuals who decide to set up their computers to tape shows for them. But if they do get their patent enforced that is exactly what they *could* do in the future.
In the end I tend to think the TiVO patent should have been rejected as obvious. However, I think the only reason TiVO didn't make money is the monopoly cable companies and satellite companies have on their markets. When data service becomes the commidity everyone buys and there is free competition amount content providers on an open protocal companies like TiVO won't be shut out by monopolists who can make it difficult for TiVO to penetrate their markets.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
Disclaimer - I used to work for Philips. I'm still using a Series 1 Tivo that has been seriously upgraded. I own some Tivo stock.
Tivo has been compared to the VCR and with that logic, does not deserve patent protection. I disagree and believe that Tivo did innovate and does deserve patent protection.
What Tivo did first:
1) Downloadable program guide - Before Tivo, the only automated way to record was VCR+. It was lame and with TV Guide print deadlines 3-4 week before publish date it was shaky.
2) Digital recording - Though I agree that substituting a hard disk for a tape (media) may not deserve a patent, Tivo was the first successful use of mass market MPEG-2 recording. My tivo was 20 hours at first, this was an exponential leap. Tivo took open-source code (Linux), developed proprietary code and hardware, a dial-up infrastructure and made it work. They also, to the best of my knowledge, have honored the GPL and released their GPL tainted code back.
3) User interface - don't even try to tell me this is derivative of any VCR interface that exists today. Tivo's GUI is 6 years old and it still works well.
4) 30-sec skip, wish lists, filters, etc. might be considered standard now but when Tivo implemented them, they were revolutionary to the TV market and pre-digital TV.
I ABOLUTELY do not believe in patent protection where prior art exists or where it's basic physics or biology, etc. that someone is trying to patent. That said, I believe that Tivo innovated, took risk, and is trying to defend its investment and true intellectual property. This is what the patent system and at a more basic level, property rights are all about.
The real issue and problem is not Echostar, it is Hollywood and the MPAA. Tivo is the ultimate fair-use device. They deserve protection for their ideas and the right to survive in a FAIR market on their own ideas.
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
That's what was novel about TiVO's device. They had the same hardware limitations as everybody else, but they figured out how to get the data on and off anyway. TiVO didn't make their device work because they put a faster drive in their box than Echostar. They made it work because they were smart about where to put the data. That's not trivial.