Patent Troll Attacks Cable, Digital TV Standards

DavidGarganta writes "A patent troll firm in suburban Philadelphia, Rembrandt IP Management, is trying to force large cable operators and major broadcasters to pay substantial license fees on the transmission of digital TV signals and Internet services. The firm is apparently trying to get 0.5% of all revenues from services that supposedly infringe on the patents. The targeted companies include ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, Comcast, Time Warner, Cox, Charter and Cablevision. According to MultiChannel News, Rembrandt's assault is especially aggressive, even for a patent troll: 'It is attacking two key technology standards used by the cable and broadcast industries, CableLabs' DOCSIS and the Advanced Television Systems Committee's digital-TV spec. "If they're successful, this could affect everything from the cost of cable service to the price of TVs," said the attorney close to the litigation, who spoke only on condition of anonymity.'"

Comments

Re:What the hell...

[betterunixthanunix]

Not sure if you are joking, but for anyone who is wondering what a patent troll is, it is a company that makes money simply by suing other companies for patent infringement. This is different from a company like Microsoft, that creates and sells other products, and is therefore stuck in a mutually-assured-destruction situation that prevents them from suing others for key patents. The problem with patent trolls is that they add absolutely nothing to society; most don't even invent the patented idea, they just buy it from someone else.

Look at their "Careers"

[SerpentMage]

In their careers section they have the following description.

http://www.rembrandtip.com/careers.html
"
Analyze markets and companies to assess IP commercialization opportunities

Develop and model business cases and royalty analysis for specific licensing opportunities or industries

Perform competitive analysis breakdown and strategic direction of leading industry companies

Supporting analysis for new business opportunities around targeted patent acquisitions
"

Give me a freaken break! This company goes out looks at what are up and coming industries. Then it "creates" ideas and patents the heck out of them so that they can license and throttle an up and coming industry.

This is not even funny. Imagine coming up with some really cool idea, but to have it patented away from you. This is how industries are broken. Part of the problem with this is that lawyers can sue without restrictions. Lawyers can go fishing in the industry. They can patent, sue and see what sticks.

To make that go away, you can do the following:

1) Make lawyers work pro-bono (as they do in many countries). That is they can only charge so much.
2) Make lawyers pay if the lawsuit fails. For example, if say somebody brought up a lawsuit where they wanted 50 billion say, "if you loose you need to come up with say 1%". That way you can still sue, but you better have a good case. Otherwise it is going to cost you quite a bit.

Re:This is a Bad Thing ?

[arivanov]

I do not know what their patent is, but the ideas from the DOCSIS MAC layer are also used in all 802.11 standards as well as satellite modem standards. The MAP metod to mix CSMA-CD and mandatory transmit opportunities is the de-facto method for managing Layer2 QoS in all subscriber oriented tech that has hit the market for the last 10 years. There are other places where other network standards have heavily borrowed from DOCSIS.

So if their patents are anywhere close this it will get extremely entertaining...