Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

TiVO Patent Upheld, Dish May Have to Disable DVR

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the warped-decisions dept.

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld a ruling by a lower court that Dish Network DVRs infringe upon TiVO's patent on a 'multimedia time warping system'. According to some analysts, this could not only make Dish liable for damages, it could force them to shut down their DVR service, harming their customers. The patent in question has already been reexamined once and the ruling on appeal (PDF) was unanimous."

4 of 235 comments (clear)

  1. MythTV by Aardpig · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I wonder if this will have any effect on MythTV?

    --
    Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
  2. The VCR is a Multimedia time warping machine... by okmijnuhb · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ...isn't that prior art?

  3. MPEG Streams Only? by JustinRLynn · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The patent specifically mentions conversion to and manipulation of the incoming signal via an MPEG formatted stream. Does this mean that devices that use another format for manipulating the streams, say Ogg/Vorbis/Theora, would not be infringing?

  4. GPL3 workaround by sumdumass · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm surprised that no one is commenting on the GPLv3 and the effect this has on Tivo using GPLed products.

    I can see several situations develop. First, Tivo uses GPLed code (GPLv3) with their time shifting software and is forced to not apply the patent to derived code. Second and probably more likely, they don't use GPLed code (or GPLv3 code) for the recording and time shifting and use the patent to stop hackers from messing around and getting the Tivo functions working with non Tivo firmware or signed kernels.

    Or 3, they don't use GPLv3 code all together and nothing has changed. But it is definitely interesting to think about.