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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!"
I apologize for not being in the know, but does this mean that DirecTv's dvr service is now worthless?
I must bid you farewell....... "walks out amid the gunfire"
I'm more concerned about what this means for projects like MythTV...
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
Now they have a monopoly, so can charge monopoly prices. I'm sure that's a win for someone, but I'm not sure how it's a win for everyone.
Disclaimer: I work for Echostar.
I'm just a Technical Support Representative, but I've been reading about this case long before I worked there.
The initial ruling, I applauded. Yes, Echostar screwed up with Tivo. Yes, I think they should have to pay for that mistake, in monetary terms. Tivo earned at least that much.
However - DVR functionality at this point is just about commonplace - Dish/Echostar's DVRs perform the same functions that Tivo, and 50 other competing products do, and to tell Echostar that it can no longer compete in this now-established market is tantamount to handing the company over to a Firing Squad.
Nevermind the fact that there are now millions of Dish Network customers that are using DVR recievers, that will find out about this case, find that they've lost the functionality that they have been paying for every month - and place the blame squarely on - guess who? - Tivo.
Now, I like Tivo - and I hope they succeed, and again, I'm more than happy to see them monetarily compensated for the situation. But this is not punishing Echostar/Dish - this is only punishing the consumers who have bought those devices and who use them every day, and continue to do so.
On a personal note - this lawsuit will make my life a living hell, becuase those millions of customers will be calling me to explain why they can no longer use the functionality that they signed up for. The first time I recieve a phonecall asking why our DVR service has disappeared and why they cannot use the hard drive on the device they paid for, is the day that I turn in my resignation.
-Julius X
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Here in Canada Bell ExpressVu is essentialy the Dish Network Canada. In fact, I believe that was the original name before it was changed. As such, they rely on Dishnet for all their receiver technolgy including receiver software, as I understand it. I wonder how this will affect ExpressVu customers given that I have a Dishnet 510 PVR, branded as an ExpressVu model 5900, if at all. I guess in the long run the solution is going to involve a lot of money from Dishnet changing hands to Tivo. There is no way that Dishnet will let the situation stand and perhaps they're about to get their ass handed to them much like RIM with the Blackberry.
It is a sad day for competition and software development. TiVo's patent is another example of why patents suck. Subtracting the amount of time passed in the media stream during the real time it takes someone to press the play button is obvious, and in fact also reportedly appears in XP Media Center Edition. Obvious things are not patentable, yet TiVo has their patent and is using it to destroy competition. If I were someone who owned one of the EchoStars that will be disabled in the next 60 days, I'd be pretty pissed off.
Your UID is very high, so I'll excuse that remark.
That is how it works in theory. In practice:
1) The patentee gets a patent on something he didn't actually invent, but was first to file.
2) Patents are granted on mundane, obvious inventions. (Queue the "obvious invention on a computer/Internet" patents) These are granted because patent examiners don't have much technical expertise in the field and have limited time to check for prior art.
3) If you do actually invent something non-obvious, and the big guys infringe on your patent, you'll bankrupt yourself via legal fees trying to get them to pay.
Dare I say yes?
I paid extra for receivers with PVR/DVR capability. I pay the DVR surcharge each month for each receiver I have activated that has a DVR. I have 180HRS of recorded programs on my DVR I still want to watch. It looks to me like instead of a deal between Tivo and Dish to make things ok, the Dish customers are going to get royally screwed in this case. We paid, took our time to collect programs to watch, and they are about to be taken away unexpectedly. How about a class action suit on behalf of the Dish customers that are about to lose out? dwg
Then make sure to stop using your cable box, your cell phone, your game console connected to an online service, and your PC running Windows.
To me the scariest of those is Windows. Microsoft has total control at a moment's notice of the large percentage of machines worldwide with automatic updates enabled, and the rest could be compromised with a trojan in a manually-installable critical update. Can you imagine the chaos if world's Windows machines erased their hard drives tomorrow? Not that Microsoft would ever intentionally do that, but still, that is a lot of power held up there in Redmond. It could be used militarily if it were seized by the government.
Firebug. It will make your jaw hit the floor.
The Barton time warp patent is not a submarine patent. Tivo did not hide the existance of the patent and Tivo claims that they informed Echostar of the pending patents when they first pitched the Tivo to Echostar. It appears to me that Echostar stole Tivo's idea when they showed the prototype Tivo to Echostar. Whether this judgement and Tivo's patents can stand the test of time is an unknown right now. Tivo's most important patents are for the ability to simultaneously record and play back a video stream and for not using the CPU to do the encoding / decoding. Tivo had operating prototypes at the time that they applied for the patent. Although it doesn't really matter because software patents are enforceable in the US, it appears that these Tivo patents are not purely software related, nor are they simply abstract ideas; they involved the use of specialized hardware. I am not sure whether these technologies were obvious or novel at the time that the patent was applied for.
Why is it that the customer has to suffer? A while ago, when Microsoft lost a patent dispute, they urged customers to apply a Service Pack for Office, and stop using the version that got shipped on purchase!
What fault is it of the customer, if the vendor from who he purchsaed some product / service is found guilty of patent abuse? If Echostar has abused TiVo's patents and sold a few millions of their products... I think a more equitable judgement ought to be along the lines... like, Echostar to pay TiVo the requisite license money so that existing customers may continue to use their products and services uninterrupted.
A patent should not imply that one single company has exclusive rights to implement, sell and support products based out of the said patent. The true purpose of patents is in fact, to spur innovation... not to build monopolies. Echostar might be directed NOT TO sell future products in violation of patents... it appears UNJUST that existing customers suffer a loss of functionality because of this. What if a patent violation happened in a medicinal drug? Patients must vomit already ingested medicines and die?
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
This is the major problem with today's patent system, IMHO. I think a great many problems can be solved with a simple solution:
This would accomplish a couple of things. First of all, it would stop this nonsense of building a market and then plundering it with a finally granted patent. Ideally, it would also help the approval process by timing the grant with first-to-market. The patent office could then see if a market builds naturally while they are evaluating the patent and use that information to help decide it's obvoiusness (1-click comes to mind). Finally, point 3 would force patent owners to act quickly rather than wait to essentially extort a company that has built a mature product with a decent market share.
I realize that this might make companies more paranoid of trade secrets, but aren't those what the patents publicly mimic in the first place? Kind of a legal framework for "secret ingredients"? It's not a perfect solution and I'd love input, so flame away.US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
The great thing about the Dish PVRs is they record the mpeg2 stream. They don't have to lose quality in the conversion of analog to digital.
Assuming of course you are happy with the amount of compression the digital satellite company places on the stream. I know I looked at getting a DirecTiVo box which also recorded the digital stream. They made the mistake of showing Boomerang on the floor display: jaggy artifacts all along every high-contrast line in the animation. Apparently someone thought they could recompress the animated channels far more than they can take.
If I bought a Tivo I'd have to hook it up to the Audio/Video jacks on the back of my Dish box.
Only if you were still set on using Dish. But I'll grant it is nice to get real 5.1 sound out of those satellite DVRs. It seems the analog TiVos can't handle preserving Dolby Surround.
Anyway, DRM paranoia seems to be preventing companies from letting another implement a secure digital recorder. Everyone seems to want to use their own proprietary devices.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Ahh, you're thinking of the old TiVo/DirecTV alliance. But beginning last year, DirecTV ditched TiVo in favor of selling its own PVRs. DTV customers who got one of the older TiVo-based systems still get to keep theirs, but all new DTV customers get home-grown PVRs. I would think they might be next on the list of lawsuit targets.
It may become a moot point, though, since - as you point out - an EchoStar/DirecTV merger has been attempted twice before and is continually being rumored afresh.
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The problem is also that Tivo (last time I looked) doesn't work without a landline phone. That screws over everyone that's trying to move over to mobile phones (like myself). So I'm thoroughly not impressed.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.