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Microsoft Sues TiVo
doperative notes that "TiVo [is accused] of infringing four patents. Microsoft is asking that TiVo be barred from importing the digital-video recorders, which are primarily made in Mexico and sold in the U.S... The four patents in the ITC case relate to program schedules and selection, controlling the interface, and a way to restrict use of the DVR based on the program’s rating."
"Sue" isn't the best choice of words here. It was an ITC Complaint that Microsoft hopes will result in the banning of TiVo imports from Mexico that allegedly infringe on Microsoft's patents. The patents are 5,585,838, 5,731,844, 6,028,604, and 5,758,258. You can find confirmation from Microsoft's mouth here.
My work here is dung.
Always getting sued by someone.
I wonder how Microsoft can claim the patent when Tivo was first with the DVR capability. Also: Why did microsoft wait almost 15 years to bring this complaint? Why the delay Borgified Bill.
Information wants to be expensive AND wants to be free. So you have Value vs. Cheap distribution fighting each other.
>restrict use of the DVR based on the program’s rating.
Isn't that what the rating was put there FOR? my god, how did they get a patent on that?!!?
Funny how three of the patents were granted just at the time the Tivo must have been in final development.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
I respectfully disagree. Back in the day (2001?) I had a Microsoft UltimateTV for our satellite service. I felt the technology was considerably more sophisticated and easier to use than Tivo. IIRC, the user interface was much quicker and effective and it also had dual tuners. I believe MS stopped selling it less than a year after release for whatever reason. I kept using it as my preferred DVR until DirecTV released their HD DVR. Granted, these patents appear amazingly broad and I have personal issue with software patents like this, but saying MS cannot compete on merits is not true, at least in this case, IMHO.
Yes, no clue from someone who has watched MS since the late '80s, when they were still producing Xenix, had hijacked IBM's DOS and called it their own, the DR DOS debacle, the bad treatment of WordPerfect, Novell, et alia, the payoffs to SCO, and now they're suing to help out their customer, AT&T in defense of a lawsuit in which MS has no firsthand involvement. Why did MS stop selling that TV? Could it be that they weren't seeing the customer demand for their own products that other companies like TiVO were? My disdainful comment stands, gents, sorry.
Nobody can complain of or sue Microsoft effectively. Microsoft can use the law to bust someone's balls for something.
What about Eolas (don't want to link to a patent troll), which sued Microsoft for auto-activated controls in a web browser and won half a billion dollars? Or i4i which sued them for being able to edit custom XML tags in Office 2007 and won $290 million? Oh, and Sun sued them over Java and won, although that resulted in Java not being installed by default on the dominant platform which I always thought was a terrible outcome for Sun.
I am sure that there are plenty of other examples, but those are the ones that jumped to mind. Most lawsuits end in private settlements so we never know the final figure.
These are not valid patents. They are just products Microsoft hopes to sell one day. So Microsoft is just abusing patent law to build the monopoly.
When will this charade be put to an end. And since when did Microsoft own the rights to the function of the 'V' chip?
Oh ya, when the patent was granted. Go figure.
No, MS winning against Eolas wouldn't have helped anything or changed the situation. If someone has to be a patent troll, I'm happy to see them go after Microsoft and other big monopolists and take away some of their cash. I haven't seen Eolas suing anyone else, such as Opera or Mozilla, so I don't feel to badly about them.
What I would have liked to see in that situation was MS do something useful with their power, and pressure government to fix the patent laws so that they silliness with software patents is stopped. But they didn't do that; they'd rather pay $500M so they can keep using their software patents as offensive weapons against smaller competitors.