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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.'"
They had to rewatch the decision 7 times on their TiVo.
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.
FATALITY!
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.
What the hell kind of patent is that?
What kinds of patents does TiVo actually have? Are things like MythTV at risk?
I have been considering writing my own Myth-like software. I would hate to get it shut down because of some stupid GUI patent or something.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
... 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.
Trust me, the cable DVRs were never really "free". You were paying for it somewhere in your cable bill, anyway. Now, all that will change is maybe a few bucks will go to TiVo, Inc., instead of into the pockets of the cable companies. I doubt anyone will notice the change.
What is a big plus is that the chances are greatly increased that cable subsribers will have the option of using the vastly superior TiVo software on their cable DVRs (as will soon be the case for some Comcast subscribers), rather than the slapdash piece of crap DVR software that is currently offered to cable subscribers because the cable companies know the customer don't have any choice and don't know what they are missing. That will change, thanks to this legal decision.
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:
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
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
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."
"The two earliest consumer DVRs, ReplayTV and TiVo, were..." BOTH "...launched at the 1999 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas."
They were both introduced the same year.
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
TiVo's patent in question is on being able to record one show while using the same device to watch another. Dish's prior recorder that allowed pausing of live TV isn't really prior art of that.
The Abekas A62 disk recorder could record one video stream, while playing back another. It was introduced in the mid 1980's, so any patents involved have likely run out by now. Abekas even won an Emmy award for it in 1986.
It was meant for professional studio use, cost about $150K, and only held 100 seconds of video - but hey, that was 20 years ago. I'm not sure how Tivo can claim to have invented the technology.
EchoStar Statement Regarding VERDICT IN TiVo Inc. v. EchoStar Communications Corp. LAWSUIT
April 13, 2006 - This is the first step in a very long process and we are confident we will ultimately prevail. Among other things, we believe the patent - as interpreted in this case - is overly broad given the technology in existence when TiVo filed its patent. We believe the decision will be reversed either through post-trial motions or on appeal. Additionally, the Patent Office is in the process of re-examining TiVo's patent, having determined there is a substantial question concerning the validity of the patent.
DISH Network subscribers can continue to use the receivers in their homes, including their DVRs. Furthermore, TiVo dropped their claim that EchoStar's Dishplayer 7200 DVR infringes their patent.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
Unfortuantly, it's more likely that a patent license will be in the works for DirecTV. DirecTV seems more interested in limiting functionality to it's users than Tivo. If I can't Tivo with DirecTV anymore, they'll lose a customer, because their new DVR is just a DVR, it doesn't do what you expect your Tivo to do.
I know it's not free, but most cable company DVRs cost about $10/month extra which is about the same price as Tivo's program guide service. If they're making money at all, it's probably from jacking up the base price of cable TV to subsidize low (possibly predatory) pricing.
It's good to make lists like this but there are a couple to shorten it by.
2) Digital recording - Though I agree that substituting a hard disk for a tape (media) may not deserve a patent, Tivo was the first successful use of mass market MPEG-2 recording.
As others have mentioned the original Dish Players had rudimentary recording before TiVo. They've been MPEG-2/DVB since inception.
4) 30-sec skip, wish lists, filters, etc. might be considered standard now but when Tivo implemented them, they were revolutionary to the TV market and pre-digital TV.
There were some VCR's on the market with a 30-second skip button.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
It doesn't matter who's on each side of the argument - but any outcome in favor of a software patent is bad. Very bad.
You are absolutely wrong about no downloadable program guide before TiVo.
There were both StarSight and VideoGuide, both sold in the mid 1990s before TiVo.
VideoGuide actually had a nice GUI interface with a comfortable simple remote. Except for the limitations of Tape (no random access, no way to delete shows or know what was on which tape), it was quite comparable to TiVo. It downloaded program guide data via a wireless interface (based on a pager network). You could buy the units at any RadioShack.
Do you not see a huge qualitative difference between what you just discribed and a tool that lets you schedule television shows to record (by name), records them, manages their deletion, and let's you view them while simultaneously providing a nice 30 minute buffer on live TV?
This is like saying the mechanisms of a specific electronic calculator shouldn't be patented because man had already invented the abacus.
I really hope they start selling a service though: Remote control design for dummies. The Tivo remote is just so damn nice compared to the crap Comcast is hoisting on me.
Even if EchoStar fails in appeals court, the Damages will most likely be capped depending on State law. I think about 30 states have caps on punitive damages, VA being the most extreme - where punitive damages are caped at $350,000 even. Jury's aren't told about the caps. They come out of the court room thinking they really stuck it to the defendant, and as soon as they leave, the Judge reduces the number according to the state's law. (That one that applies is where the injury occurred)
Newspapers almost always report the non-capped number. Rarely if ever will we find out about the final judgment - sometimes billions of dollars less than what was initially proposed.
The Texas state law for Punitive Damage's(as explained in the context of the Merck/Vioxx trials) is a little confusing, and potentially dangerous to EchoStar since TiVo is claiming they have had $650 million in economic damages in the past nine years. But if TiVo really believed that was true, I suspect it would have sought much higher damages than they did.
I disagree and believe that Tivo did innovate and does deserve patent protection.
Tivo may well have thought innovatively, and be a great company -- but remember, you can't patent great ideas, and that's what exactly most of what you describe sounds like.
If they had a sufficiently non-obvious mechanism to implement some of their great ideas, they could patent the mechanism, but anybody else is quite free to come along and use a different method with the same result. Even if Tivo thought of it first.
We live, as we dream -- alone....
Patent infringement cases are exclusively federal jurisdiction, so any state laws pertaining to damages would be completely irrelevant. More importantly, there aren't "punitive" damages in patent infringement cases -- the patentee is entitled to lost profits or a reasonable royalty for past infringement and an injunction against future infringement. Where the jury finds the infringement to be willful, that number can then be trebled.