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TiVo Wins Permanent Injunction Against EchoStar
ZenFodderBoy writes "It's official! Judge Folsom entered his ruling today granting TiVo nearly $90 million in damages, plus granting a permanent injunction calling for the disabling of nearly all of EchoStar's DVRs within the next 30 days. EchoStar's motion to stay the injunction pending appeal was denied. Additionally, the judge reserves the right to grant additional damages in the future, so treble damages may still be coming. Excellent news for TiVo!"
What is this going to do to Tivo stock I wonder? ;)
Forum Foundry, Inc.
"Excellent news for TiVo!" Bad news for consumers.
Thanks for posting some links to the background of this story and for the detailed introduction and background that you added to your entry and for not just linking to another blog entry elsewhere on the...
Oh wait.
He who lives by the submarine patent claim dies by the submarine patent claim...
Tivo's time will come.
Disabling all those PVRs is I guess one way to see justice, but in the end it seems that the customers will wear the brunt of the impact.
There isn't much information on this finding, but I'd take a guess and say that customers that have signed up for EchoStar's service may be in for a rude shock when their PVR stops working.
I'm up for rooting for Tivo but I guess this is business, and if Tivo couldn't find a way to sell their products to the broadcast vendors without going to litigation it makes for a difficult times.
If you can't compete on product and service, you deserve to go out of business.
Isn't anyone else bothered by the fact that all of these customers who BOUGHT this item, can now have it disabled remotely? That's what makes this story interesting to me. Remind me to never buy something that can be taken from me...remotely.
From what I understand the patent infrigement is on tivos "Time warping system", which I if I understand it correctly is "pause and rewind live TV" as well as "record one show while watching another".
/dev/video0 >/tmp/in0.mpg /tmp/in0.mpg
/dev/video0 >/tmp/in0.mpg /dev/video1 >/tmp/in1.mpg /tmp/in1.mpg
Basically the number one claim seems to be on seeking in an open file if the file is a multimedia stream. In Linux language:
cat
mplayer
Those two lines would instantly infringe on tivos patent.
The next claim is even fruitier.
cat
cat
mplayer
I have a hard time beliving tivo actully did this first, and even if they did where is the invention. When I first got a TV card a couple of years ago this is what I did because it was the easiest way to get the media to play. Needless to say, but I didn't feel like I invented something. Maybe I missed something about tivos patent, I'm not a lawyer.
I know there always seems to be the sentiment around here that patents are evil... and those that hold them didn't really innovate & are trying to just litigate their way to the bank (ntp).
If ever there were a case though where I was glad to see a decision go in favor of a patent holder... this would be it. When Tivo was introduced - there really wasn't anything like it... and not only had they introduced a product that really changes the way you watched tv - their 1.0 product was truly amazing, a home run. The interface was intuitive, simple to use & highly funtional. Ever other dvr software I've seen pushed out by cable & satellite company have all seemed like a poor knock off built from some common (poor) framework. To the point where the functionality delivered by some of these dvrs really isn't much more than a tapeless vcr. If this decision happens to force echostar, directv, comcast, rcn and others to use Tivo hardware/software for the next few years - then I think in the long run the consumers will be winners... cause when the time comes and the patent does run out... people will be hooked on 'the good stuff' in the dvr universe & those companies will be forced to offer solutions which actually compete with tivo and drive innovation.
anyways... that's my 2 cents.
disclaimers:
1) while I talk about 'other dvrs' not being too great... I haven't seen too many. I can speak from experience that the comcast one sucks ass... and the directv-brand one seems to be build from a similar model (and reviews of it weren't too favorable). Anyways... having said that... replay tv did look like a valid competitor while it was around (RIP)... and the mythtv & freevo homebrews look great...
2) didn't mean to imply abouve that directv never had tivo... I know they do... I own a Sony SAT-T60 DirecTivo unit. Mainly just commenting on their new homebrew tivo replacements...
Fuck tivo.
A little misdirected anger?
Maybe you have some other reason to be pissed at Tivo. Don't be mad at Tivo becuase Echostar sold you something they stole from Tivo and got caught.
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
Patents don't imply that, they are that. But I agree that you're quite right about the injustice of the injunction, and about the most obvious way of settling the matter without injuring third parties.
In the software realm, if, to pick an example close to the hearts of many in the legal profession, WordPerfect were suddenly found to have violated a patent, would it be appropriate to disable all copies of WordPerfect and force users to purchase another product, just so that they could read from and write to their existing files? And how could such users determine that the product they'd been forced to buy wouldn't in turn have a self-destruct injunction filed against it next month?
Mind the Gap
The ruling didn't say that Echostar had to kill all of their DVR's. The ruling said that Echostar had 30 days to negotiate a licensing arrangement with TiVo. TiVo has some great leverage in the negotiations, but that's because Echostar refused to negotiate previously, preferring to play "hard ball" in court, and lost.
This is, by the way, how basic patents work. There's no "it's popular, so you don't have to pay to license the patent" rule. For example, Motorolla has a patent on putting a heat sink on a transistor, and every other electronics company pays them for it. There's an engineer that has the patent on on-screen programmable VCR's, and he gets paid for every single VCR manufactured. The way the world works, that engineer doesn't have a monopoly on on-screen programmable VCR's, but every VCR manufacturer has to negotiate a license before they can (legally) ship their product.
This won't affect Echostar customers, or technical support representatives, unless Echostar decides that they'd rather screw their customers than cut a deal with TiVo. At that point, resigning is a reasonable course of action.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
The true purpose of patents is in fact, to spur innovation... not to build monopolies.
Actually, a monopoly spurs innovation by doing exactly that - granting a temporary monopoly on the patented idea. This is what encourages individuals and companies to invest the time and manpower to create something new: they get to reap ALL of the benefit for a period of time until the idea becomes part of the public domain. This is how it is supposed to work.
I do agree, however, that EchoStar should've been forced to pay the required licensing fees to Tivo, insteead of forcing them to shut off their customers products. This is an example of just because it's possible to disable their patent-infringing product doesn't mean that they should. That's the bad for consumers part, not the fact that EchoStar violated patents.
This would not be a first time for Dish.
The Dish Network management knows how to use their customers as leverage. Every time there is a contract dispute between a program provider and Dish, they make sure that it is clear to the customer how to contact that program provider and pitch a bitch.
I would be surprised if a similar tactic didn't get applied here.
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I would agree with that argument if TiVo hadn't been attempting to resolve patent issues with Echostar for several years. E* can hardly claim ignorance on this issue. They can't now say, "Well we infringed on the patent, but we didn't know!" IMHO, it was E*'s defiance that enabled cable companies to feel free to implement their own DVRs.
This is definately a win for TiVo. This is definately a loss for E*, but I think the loss was E*'s own doing. It's also a loss for Time Warner, who is not in negotiations with TiVo and a win for Comcast who is. And depending on whether or not you think that TiVo functionality is better than all the other DVRs out there, it may or may not be a win for the consumer.
But as far as E* is concerned, this is exactly the outcome they should have expected if they lost the case. As far as E*'s customers are concerned, I am almost entirely certain that E* will not shut off DVR service to their customers. They'd lose way too many customers to DirecTV - who does license TiVo - or to cable companies who have no injunction over their heads. What will happen is that E* will pay a license fee to TiVo in order to retain its customer base. E*'s profits will go down a little bit. E*'s stock will take a hit. TiVo's profits & stock will go up. E*'s customers won't experience anything different.
$.02
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
Actually, the judgment is not so stupid but has a valid point. Echostar lost the trial and Tivo was awarded damages (we know this)... Echostar does not want to pay, for obvious reasons, and thinks it can either get the verdict overturned on appeal or perhaps get the patents invalidated, but in the meantime Echostar would like to still engage in patent infringement (remember, the jury found that Echostar was guilty)... As Patent law permits, Tivo filed an injuction to stop Echostar's patent infringement,which was reasonably granted... reasonably because Echostar could not convince the court to allow them to continue to infringe the patent while awaiting appeal, which could take years...
The injunction gives bite to the verdict... now Echostar has to either pay up what the verdict says...or work on a settlement agreement... of course, it still can and will appeal, but in the meantime, it cannot continue to infringe Tivo's patent... else, without an injuction option, a guilty verdict in any patent infringement trial would be meaningless if the infringer could continue to well, infringe...
neither the medicinal drug nor another poster's Wordperfect scenarios are pertinent analogies... medicine already ingested is obviously not the same as a service provided by a company... the drug company has no more rights in the sold drugs... if anything, an injunction would prohibit such an infringer from producing and selling any more drugs, but of course, whether a court would order an injunction against a drug company producing a drug, a court would consider other factors in that type of scenario, such as whether the drug is taken for life/health threatening reasons (a cancer drug vs. an erection drug)...and whether there are alternative sources for similar drugs (the actual patent holder produces the drug)...
remember, Echostar's dvr is a service...the customer does not own the dvr software, Echostar does... so the injuction prevents them from continuing their patent infringing service... customers may suffer (although, what do they really suffer? nothing life/health threatening, unless missing Laguna Beach or another retarded episode of The Hills would create mind crushing depression leading to a surge of bulemia among silly girls), but that is Echostar's fault, not Tivo's...
So, the judgment is not stupid...its a tool to enforce the verdict and stop a convicted infringer from continuing their illegal activity
Personally, I wouldn't locate any part of any software business in the U.S. Major risk of litigious annoyance + no real advantage that I can see.
On a sidenote: do you think the US govt and patent office considered this when they decided to make everything patentable?
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There's a few differences between the Tivo case and the classic patent troll case.
First off, Tivo makes a competing product. They're not just an IP company, like the worst trollers out there.
Second, Tivo did initially negotiate with Dish to make a Tivo PVR for Dish. Dish decided to end the negotiations and make their own PVR. One can argue from this that Dish knew they were "stealing" Tivo's technology.
This injunction basically steals from us.
Wow, that really sucks. You should call customer service at Echostar and tell them to stop selling you stolen things, and tell them to pay the rightful owners for what they stole, and then your equipment will work.
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