Injunction Against EchoStar Blocked

bestinshow writes "ExtremeTech has the news that a judge has blocked the injunction against Echostar Communications selling its PVRs." From the article: "The ruling was the latest in an ongoing battle between TiVo, one of earliest companies to design personal video recorders, now called digital video recorders or DVRS. 'As a result of the stay EchoStar can continue to sell, and provide to consumers, all of its digital video recorder models,' EchoStar added. 'We continue to believe the Texas decision was wrong, and should be reversed on appeal. We also continue to work on modifications to our new DVRs, and to our DVRs in the field, intended to avoid future alleged infringement.'"

Comments

question for those who understood this stuff..

[free space]

Does that mean that EchoStar can rest assured that their recorders will work indefinitely, or should they continue worrying that the blocking of the ruling can be reversed?

Re:question for those who understood this stuff..

[Buran]

The only DVR you can really depend on is one you own outright and can make configuration changes to for the programming data source yourself (like a Myth box).

And if (I don't know if this applies here, just conjecturing) the patents apply to that code as well, and it can't be distributed anymore?

If someone has a legitimate patent, and the invention was non-obvious when the patent application was made, then the only source you can depend on is the inventor's, if they choose to be sole distributor.

This is good.

[SonicBurst]

This is good news for consumers. With a little luck, the original judgment will be dismissed, perhaps even Tivo's obvious patent invalidated. I can't believe the case made it this far in the first place.

Re:This is good.

[StringBlade]

From friends who have one, I hear TiVo is a great product - far better than anything offered by Dish, DirecTV or cable companies and I'd hate to see them go out of business because of this. Additionally, Echostar seems to have played some dirty pool in getting their own DVR out the gate by peeking at a TiVo that was left behind during negotiations between TiVo and Echostar for licensing DVRs. But at the same time, I don't think that TiVo should have such a broad patent on this technology. In this case, it seems they're using their patent defensively simply to stay alive in a market that can quickly and easily be taken away from them by the satellite and cable companies that provide the content transport.

This is a philosophically painful case for me because I want to root for TiVo because they have a superior product, but not for patents. And I want to root for Echostar because I have one of their DVRs and would hate to lose it's functionality. I also don't want to root for TiVo because a win for them will negatively impact Dish customers who through no fault of their own are being punished for Echostar's behavior. That's like Microsoft users being forced to remove the Quicktime player from all Windows installations because of some industrial espionage they did against Apple (just by way of example -- it didn't really happen).

Re:This is good.

[Rich0]

Then offer them a 200% payback. Outright. Instead of a patent creating a monopoly, let it be worth a 200% ROI for the patent holder if it gets used in products to a certain amount within the next five (or ten, or thirty) years. Paid by the patent office, financed through ordinary state financing rather than a hidden economic tax in the incarnation of monopoly pricing.

You essentially described how the phone company used to work. You know why the telephone company invented the transistor? Simple - their profits were a fixed percentage of their costs - the more they spent the more they made. As a result blue sky R&D was heavily financed - since every dollar spent was GUARANTEED a $1.10 return (or whatever the rate was). It also used to be the case that people would tiptoe around the house when somebody was on a long distance call, since the rates were amazingly high - probably a result of the aforementioned waste. Sure, the transistor was a good thing to come out of the arrangement, but for every dollar spent on R&D I'm sure 50 were spent on bureaucracy - since the more you wasted the more you made.

Pharmaceuticals are a perfect example; they waste 80% of their income outside research. They spend more than twice as much on marketing and administration as they do on R&D. The protection breeds the expense which makes the protection necessary for the protected business model.

Hardly - the figures you quote apply in ANY industry - Pharma actually tends to invest more in R&D comparatively than most industries. NOBODY spends more on R&D than they do on marketing. That is simply because people buy the products they see on TV regardless of whether they are better. If you ban advertising of any kind then maybe that might change. Your own figures above suggests Pharma is spending 20% on R&D. Name any company outside of Pharma that has comparable expenses - other than startups that obviously only spend money on R&D as they have no product to market (and even then they often spend money to create a market for products that don't yet exist). Even software houses that have low manufacturing costs probably don't spend more than 20% on R&D.

Don't get me wrong - I'd like to see more of the money going to R&D. However, that is a function of how society actually works - if you have to make a profit, then you need to market. And if consumers buy what the Hollywood actor tells them to buy, then it is more important to pay Hollywood actors to promote your product than scientists to make it better.