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TiVo Wins Appeal On Patents For Pause, Ffwd, Rwd

Posted by kdawson on from the satellites-descending dept.

Lorien_the_first_one writes "After years of wrangling, TiVo has won its day in court against Dish Network, formerly known as the EchoStar, when the Supreme Court declined to take up Dish Network's appeal, forcing the satellite television company to pay $104 million in damages. According to the article, 'TiVo originally won a patent infringement case in 2004 against Dish, which was then named EchoStar Communications. It charged that Dish illegally copied its technology, which allows people to pause, rewind, and record live television on digital video recorders.' Despite an injunction, Dish continued distributing its set-top boxes in the belief that the work-around they had implemented avoided infringing TiVo's patents. Now the case goes back to the lower court for review to determine if they did indeed steer clear of those patents."

2 of 215 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Go TiVo by onecheapgeek · · Score: 2, Interesting

    And yet when anyone else patents a PAINFULLY OBVIOUS feature they are evil. But because it's TiVo they get a pass? I had thought about getting one. I'm passing now. TiVo = geek-friendly patent troll.

  2. Re:Fucking patent trolls by locofungus · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Found a link to the device I was using:

    http://www.laserdiscarchive.co.uk/laserdisc_archive/pioneer/pioneer_vdr-v1000/pioneer_vdr-v1000.htm

    So it was half the price I remembered.

    As well as being able to use both heads in playback mode you could use them in record/playback, playback/erase and erase/record.

    My system started with both machines with erased disks. It then started recording on machine 1. Once the disk was full it continued recording on machine 2. Once the second disk was full it returned to machine 1.

    Additionally, as recording started on disk2, erasing started on disk1. This cycle uses one head on each machine and can, in theory, continue indefinitely. In order to avoid any dropped frames, I actually started recording on machine 2 a few seconds before machine 1 disk was full so the system could only be run for a finite (but very long) time before needing to stop and erase the disks to start again.

    The other head on each machine was then used for playback.

    Tim.

    --
    God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.