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TiVo Sues Comcast Again, Alleging Operator's X1 Infringes Eight Patents (variety.com)
TiVo's Rovi subsidiary on Wednesday filed two lawsuits in federal district courts, alleging Comcast's X1 platform infringes eight TiVo-owned patents. "That includes technology covering pausing and resuming shows on different devices; restarting live programming in progress; certain advanced DVR recording features; and advanced search and voice functionality," reports Variety. From the report: A Comcast spokeswoman said the company will "aggressively defend" itself. "Comcast engineers independently created our X1 products and services, and through its litigation campaign against Comcast, Rovi seeks to charge Comcast and its customers for technology Rovi didn't create," the Comcast rep said in a statement. "Rovi's attempt to extract these unfounded payments for its aging and increasingly obsolete patent portfolio has failed to date."
TiVo's legal action comes after entertainment-tech vendor Rovi (which acquired the DVR company in 2016 and adopted the TiVo name) sued Comcast and its set-top suppliers in April 2016, alleging infringement of 14 patents. In November 2017, the U.S. International Trade Commission ruled that Comcast infringed two Rovi patents -- with the cable operator prevailing on most of the patents at issue. However, because one of the TiVo patents Comcast was found to have violated covered cloud-based DVR functions, the cable operator disabled that feature for X1 customers. Comcast is appealing the ITC ruling.
TiVo's legal action comes after entertainment-tech vendor Rovi (which acquired the DVR company in 2016 and adopted the TiVo name) sued Comcast and its set-top suppliers in April 2016, alleging infringement of 14 patents. In November 2017, the U.S. International Trade Commission ruled that Comcast infringed two Rovi patents -- with the cable operator prevailing on most of the patents at issue. However, because one of the TiVo patents Comcast was found to have violated covered cloud-based DVR functions, the cable operator disabled that feature for X1 customers. Comcast is appealing the ITC ruling.
Whoever wins, we lose.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Spending wads of cash on legal action, especially for an eventually lost fight, leads to higher pricing and cost reductions. So, I'd rather they just give up now.
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Managing the (Un)natural Resources of Tomorrow
And Rovi was an abbreviation of the company's original name: Macrovision. The company that introduced analog gain control copy protection.
Each patent has a couple pages describing *exactly* what is patented and how it's different from what was done before (prior art).
They didn't patent the concepts mentioned in the summary. Slashdot summaries often mention the general topic or concept that a patent is *related to*, phrased in a way that makes it sound like someone patented the whole concept. That's not how patents work. For example, with a video cassette (vcr) you can pause it in one device, then take it to another VCR and resume watching. Nobody can patent that idea, and their patent calls out how their invention is different from what has been done before.
If you read (part of?) any of the patents and see one that seems like it was obvious at the time (not in retrospect) I'd be curious to see it. There may be one, but don't think that just because the TOPIC mentioned in the Slashdot summary is obviously interesting, that means their invention was interesting. When Slashdot says "Space X" patents rocket guidance system" that means they patented something they invented that has to do with guiding rockets; it doesn't mean they patented the idea of rocket guidance in general.