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TiVo Relaunching As a Patent Troll?
An anonymous reader writes "TiVo's quarterly call was a bit more dramatic than usual. While they continue to lose customers and innovate 'at a very unhurried pace,' TiVo seeks a repeat DISH Network performance in going after AT&T (T) and Verizon (VZ) for infringement. Basically, TiVo's current business model appears to be ad sales and patent trolling."
It's not like TiVo is a company set up to collect patents and then chase them down. They've had products on the market for years, would by many be said to have created the home digital recorder (and thus have attained many patents), still have products on the market, and other providers have created products that are now losing TiVo business.
So if the patent is valid (I haven't read it) then surely TiVo have as much right to go after infringers as any other company that has its patents on its products infringed?
You make a good point - is this entirely a refleciton of changes in the TV market as a whole? TV sets still seem to be selling; I wonder how many are being sold to technologically adept people who buy things like Tivos, compared to more average people. I get the feeling that the continued paucity of quality TV might be driving away the kinds of people who would otherwise buy it.
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It's not trolling if your patent truly covers an innovation, and your competitors copy it. In this case it's called "protecting your rights".
So this should be tagged "!troll" "badsummary" and "bitterposter" because I'm not entirely sure that this summary does it any justice. First, TiVo is not a troll for at least the reason that they actual manufacture products embodying the patent, have done so for a long time, and actually have revenue related to both hardware and subscription fees. [citation needed ;)].
Second, together with ReplayTV (now Motorola?), TiVo really was an innovator in this space. Whether these particular patents were innovative was at least decided with respect to DishNetwork. AT&T and Verizon will now get their chance to try to invalidate it. Who knows, maybe they have some damn good art.
I think TIVO is using the patent system exactly as it was intended. They invented something unique and successfully marketed it, but then various cable and satellite companies decided to not (or to stop) paying the licensing fees and create similar devices. Let's face it, the cable companies aren't all that inovative on their own and they probably wouldn't have come up with the idea for a DVR w/o seeing TIVOs.
Putting the "anal" back into "analyst"...
It's probably a better business model than
1. Spend lots of money to invent the mousetrap
2. Spend more money to make it better
3. Allow cable/satellite to build 80% of your ideas into their own equipment and cut you out of any revenues
4. Profit
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
Every time I've set up new cable service, I try the local carrier's DVR flavor... and so far, I have always gone back to TiVo. TiVo actually DOES have a nice product with several innovative features. Protecting one's patent does NOT make one a troll: it makes one a patent holder. The original poster seems to think all patents should be abolished (which would kinda suck for encouraging some innovations).
I know people are keen to brand anyone who files patent infringement lawsuits as a patent troll but a real patent troll owns patents but makes nothing - their line of business is to buy patents and sue companies. TiVo actually produces something. They have products and offer something to customers. They are simply enforcing their patents. You are welcome to question the validity of their patents; you are welcome to question the wisdom in starting patent wars with other major companies but, let's keep our discussion real - they are not patent trolls.
Why would anyone bother buying a tivo when they can just get it right with their cable bill?
Because the cable company charges usurious rates and extra fees for a DVR with a crap interface that's littered with bugs? The only thing stopping me from switching to Tivo currently is on demand. You have to keep a box from the cable company for that to work, since cable card does not support it, and they charge you for it.
As someone who is a DirectTV subscriber I can only hint at how much myself and every other DVR user they have that I have talked to miss Tivo when it was DirecTV's DVR offering. This "homebrew" or whatever DirectTV is calling it blows on a level hard to describe.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
In my experience, average people still do watch a lot of TV, but it seems they're becoming more focused, viewing TV as a means of accessing specific shows rather than as a general leisure activity ("I want to watch the next episode of X" vs. "I think I'll relax in front of the TV"). The American-Idol style shows, particularly America's Got Talent, still seem to be doing quite well.
Although I observed this mostly in middle aged and older audiences, so perhaps the viewing patterns aren't the same for the younger generation.
With TV so fragmented and diverse now it's very hard for all but few shows to break out of the scrum and gain an audience. Just as with film studios the networks don't want niche viewers for quality programs (well maybe PBS does) they want blockbusters with high viewer ratings and long term rebroadcast royalties and DVD sales. Nobody wants a good but low rated Firefly; they all want a mega-hits like Seinfeld. As for reality shows they're cheap to produce.
"If you want to know what happens to you when you die, go look at some dead stuff."
.... you can sit on your ass, hire some lawyers, and soak up millions via your government granted monopoly.
That's what the cable companies do.
Or you can roll up your sleeves and work your ass off innovating, servicing customers, and building up a customer base
That's what TiVO did.
Sadly, it looks like they're quickly going out of business. The government should have mandated a universal standard for Satellite and Cable boxes so that TiVO (and any other manufacturer) could easily interface. Instead, we have a slapdash mix of ever-changing technologies like ATSC, QAM, SDV, etc and it's very difficult to design to a moving target (as anyone who has attempted to use a TiVO with CableCard knows).
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
but when there's only a few good things to watch (and/or several good things on at the same time),
That's good news for the consumer. TV networks are well known to put good stuff on when other networks do, and crap when other networks do, so you have to pick what good show you want to watch because all the good stuff is on at the same time on different stations. (prime time) Time shifting adds a whole lot of goodness to the consumer.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Only a total idiot would watch (un)reality TV. That doesn't dispute your assesment of its popularity.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Technology was not being developed because the people with the power did not want it ruining their business. (i.e. TV and cable/satelite tv execs)
Finally, innovative customers risked their own hard earned cash and developed the technology.
It immediately became a huge success. A new word was formed - to tivo it.
Finally the cable execs realized that they were losing business so they used their installed monopoly on black boxes to take over the business. They tried hard to ignore the copyrighted new word and replace it with "dvr it". Too bad dvr has no vowel.
The innovator that created the business could not compete with the installed monopoly base of black boxes. They tried to pass laws to let them sell the black boxes, but the cable companies effectively weakened those laws. They got destroyed not because they did not have a superior product but simply because of the monopoly factors (i.e. I can buy a Tivo but I still have to pay the cable company to rent a cable box - why pay twice?)
This is why patents exist - to protect the profits of the inventors that actually took the risks and created the product from the slimy large businesses that come in after the product is created and steal customers away.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
BUT, other companies are still pedaling their hardware that infringes on Tivo's (still valid) hardware patents. Tivo enabled certain things that everyone was chasing after for years. should they be able to profit by copying? this is what the patent system was supposed to do, reward innovators with a temporary monopoly, and grant legal leverage to support that temporary monopoly.
this is the patent system working as it should, for hardware inventions that have been reduced to practice.
So why are they a patent "troll"? It's not like they're claiming some dubious invention as their own or claiming minor modifications are innovations. They invented the DVR and made it easy to use, along with ReplayTV. They created the market. As other copycats whittle away at the patents and see much they get away with, it's only natural for Tivo to try to hold on. The article basically sounds like someone with a gripe against Tivo which is never articulated.
Nobody wants a good but low rated Firefly; they all want a mega-hits like Seinfeld
Seinfield didn't start off as a hit; it struggled for a season or two before it found a solid audience. Fox didn't give Firefly that luxury; they showed the episodes out of order and moved it around and pre-empted it several times, then canceled it before showing all the episodes or giving it a chance to find its audience (or giving its audience a chance to find it). Typical for today's corporations, concerned only for short-term profits.
Putting the "anal" back into "analyst"...
TiVO was a fantanstic invention. The problem is that it just can't compete against carrier-subsidized hardware.
You go to your Cable or Satellite TV operator and get an HD DVR for an extra $10 - 15 per month (versus a standard box) and no up-front hardware costs. Or you can buy an HD TiVO for $300 plus pay another $12.95 per month for TiVO service and $4 to $10 per month for two CableCards to work with your carrier, and still not be able to access video-on-demand services. As you can see, there's just no ROI to buying a TiVO, and only a die-hard TiVO evangelist would spend on the hardware if the carrier's box is free and monthly costs are the same or less.
That leaves TiVO with only one asset to capitalize on over the long term: their intellectual property. If indeed they own valid patents on storing TV programming to hard disk then they are not only entitled, but required as a public company, to protect and capitalize on those assets. I would think that they would need to go after the box manufacturers, and not the carriers, to enforce those patents, but IANAL.
What this means to F/OSS projects such as MythTV will have to be determined.
--- A man with a briefcase can steal more money, than any man with a gun. [Don Henley]
> I see. On your PC that you bought from Best Buy 11 years ago, you were able to have your shows recorded to a digital medium from any arbitrary analog source?
1) yes
Like the other guy, I had an analog TV frame grabber card at that time.
> You could both watch a show and record something else, simultaneously?
2)
You mean could my Unix computer MULTITASK?
Could my Unix computer do multiple disk operations concurrently?
Could my Unix computer read from one file on disk while writing to another?
A VAX built before you were born could do this.
> You had software that utilized a control scheme that realized you were human and it took you some
> time from the time you saw what you wanted to watch to when you pressed the button and adjusted accordingly?
So acknowledging that humans aren't computers is somehow patent worthy?
Adding a tweak in QA is not an invention.
> You had software that kept up with the shows you were watching, scheduling recordings based on a priority list, adjusted recording
> times when schedule changes occurred and warned you about conflicts when you recorded new shows?
You are describing basic database and procedural programming.
You basically want to give Tivo Corp a patent over simple SQL syntax and middle school BASIC programming.
> And you managed to do all of this for ~$450 (with no future expenditure required)?
Now this is just assinine. Tivos cost $1000 when they were released. Although the cost
of the unit is not really the point. The point is whether or not the invention represents
something NEW and NON-TRIVIAL. CHEAP simply isn't a part of the equation.
Do you want to stifle progress for the next 17 years over this "invention".
Also the "not future expenditure required" bit is also total nonsense since a Tivo requires
a continuing recurring fee to remain functional and many of us found the need to upgrade our own
Tivos since the stock models tended to come with a meagre amount of storage space.
> Calling all of that innovation trivial is remarkably disingenuous.
You are trying to conflate the vernacular with the relevant legal definitions here.
Writing some simple database logic to spit out a recording schedule and sort out
priorities is an undergraduate level class project. The idea to apply this to TV
is interesting but ultimately should only grant the "inventor" the advantage of
being the first mover.
They shouldn't get a state enforced monopoly over it.
Everyone else that can replicate their work should not be prevented from doing so.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.