Slashdot Mirror
TiVo Wins Appeal On Patents For Pause, Ffwd, Rwd
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."
For $DEITY sake stop tagging stories with story tag or the gets it!
To tag a story with story once is misfortune, to tag a story with story twice is annoying, to do it three its enemy action!
--- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
It's about the TiVo Multimedia time warping system patent.
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
Much of this DVR technology is "obvious" now but when TIVO first began building these boxes there was no one out there doing it. some of what they do isn't really obvious either - like if you are running FFWD and hit play it will rewind just a bit to take care of overshoot. Not an obvious feature but a VERY nice one and I'm pretty sure patented.
Whenever this story is talked about, and this has been a long running battle, everyone says the patents are "obvious" but honestly I do not think they simply patented something so obvious as the buttons found on a VCR. Instead they patented their circular buffer, the ability to watch while recording and pause without losing anything including audio\video synch. I mean really, if it was so obvious and simple why is it that every other damned commercial DVR out there sucks ass? DISH, FIOS, Direct, and all of the cable DVRs BLOW compared to the TIVO. Why is that if this is all so darned easy and obvious?
TIVO ain't perfect but they pioneered much of this and it's pretty good software. Time they got paid by all those companies that simply copied (poorly) what they did.
P.S. Yeah, I owned one of the competitor boxes that had auto-commercial skip too. A shame THAT got creamed :-(
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
How in the hell can you hope to patent this?
Is this really a novel technology, or a slapping together of a bunch of existing things in a fairly obvious manner. I mean, really, the very first applications on the internet that allowed streaming video and audio supported pause, rewind, and fast forward. I distinctly remember pushing pause on things to allow the buffer to fill up over a slow dialup line. Sometimes, the slow dialup line would enforce a pause for you. ;-)
Other than the fact that it's TV, I don't see this as being any different from real player or a bunch of things which predated it.
This patent really should be vacated, I just can't see how "a buffer with forward and backward access" is actually a novel invention. I'm of the opinion that if you can show any application which streamed multimedia ever had pause etc then the whole patent is invalid.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Simple - they didn't. Read the patent http://www.google.com/patents?id=IeoIAAAAEBAJ&dq=6,233,389
Talks about circular buffers for viewing and recording at the same time, maintaining audio synch, running the clock FWD and back while moving through the data. To say that they simply patented being able to pause TV is pretty disingenuous!
I short, summary is trolling crap per usual to get everyone up in arms. Real patent is a bit more complex. Granted much of this seems "obvious" now but back when TIVO first did it it was FAR from really obvious. It was going to get done by someone but back then on the hardware available it was pretty slick!
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
like if you are running FFWD and hit play it will rewind just a bit to take care of overshoot. Not an obvious feature but a VERY nice one and I'm pretty sure patented.
Actually it has been obvious for a few decades now:
$man rewind
int fseek(FILE *stream, long offset, int whence);
long ftell(FILE *stream);
void rewind(FILE *stream);
int fgetpos(FILE *stream, fpos_t *pos);
int fsetpos(FILE *stream, fpos_t *pos);
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Yes, topposting because the knee-jerk patent-troll comments below are annoying.
The patent: Multimedia time warping system
Talks about circular buffers for viewing and recording at the same time, maintaining audio synch, running the clock FWD and back while moving through the data. (borrowing from BLKMGK's comment below) Combination of software and hardware (circuit implementation) to get the function working.
NO, your VHS/Betamax player did not have this first, unless it could record the show and play it back at the same time, allowing you to watch different segments of the show while it kept recording. IIRC, Tivo was in negotiations with Echostar/Dish before Dish released a DVR. Tivo let them see a demo unit under NDA. Dish suddenly broke off talks with Tivo, and shortly after came out with their own DishDVR hardware. Sure enough, components infringing on the Tivo patent were found in the hardware.
This kind of crap is exactly what the patent system is supposed to prevent, or at least provide recourse for. The system is working correctly in this case. I'm a Dish subscriber, and love using DVR (even though DishDVR is far inferior to Tivo) because the TV service is the least expensive available where I'm at. It'll be interesting to see if prices change when this settles down.
"In 1985, while working at Honeywell's Physical Sciences Center, David Rafner first described a drive-based DVR designed for home TV recording, time-slipping, and skipping commercials. U.S. Patent 4,972,396 focused on a multi-channel design to allow simultaneous independent recording and playback." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_video_recorder
Looks like Tivo was just copying somebody else's idea.
- They can not claim it to be their own.
Also of note: ReplayTV was released the same year as Tivo, and it too can pause or rewind live television via "independent record and playback". Once again, Tivo can not claim first implementation.
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
Actually, the wikipedia entry is wrong. They Honeywell patent is:
Title: Multiple independently positionable recording-reading head disk system
Abstract
------
A multiple independently positionable recording-reading head optical disk system. The system includes at least one optical disk having an arrangement of data elements. A plurality of recording-reading heads read and write data onto the optical disk. An apparatus for transporting the plurality of recording-reading heads over one side of the optical disk enabling each of the recording-reading heads to read data from or write data onto the optical disk independently of the other recording-reading heads.
--
This is not a TiVo. This is how to record onto optical media with multiple independent read/write heads.
This demonstrates why you should actually verify information in WikiPedia instead of quoting it blindly.