Appeals Court Finds Echostar in Contempt in TIVO Case
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While in the past I have been critical of how this case could cost Dish Network near a billion dollars, one must be cognizant of the "big picture".Don Landis said:
Case in point: if a licensing agreement is struck, it would register as a material agreement, and thus be included on the quarterly expense of doing business. It would have an impact on the quarterly earnings per share.
Instead, as this litigation drags on, every payment made to TiVo can be done as a one-time charge, and keeps the quarterly EPS high.
And of course, quarterly EPS drives the stock price. Imagine what happens if DISH/SATS signs up for a $2 per DVR royalty payment. Imagine that DISH/SATS decides to charge $3 per DVR...
But realize that the entire DISH/SATS in-house DVR line was built on providing TiVo's implementation without their approval.Don Landis said:
Of course, TiVo could have decided to build a DVR which would have integrated Dish Network satellite transmissions. However, I'd think that Dish Network would have sued TiVo for building a Dish Network receiver without their authorization. Something about licensing technology...
I'm getting jacked $10 more a month now with the new receiver fees.... i'd say they're more than making up for whatever licensing agreement they end up with.
It's one more reason why this licensing deal is coming soon. We all got charged for it in advance of any agreement they make.
Stockholders should be happy, TIVO should be happy, and Dish doesn't care either way as they sucked the funds out of us customers.
Realigning their receiver fee structure to match their competitors....or as a i call it....TIVO licensing/settlement money
Does Charlie know something we didn't . . . .
TiVo posts $10.2m loss, remains on deathwatch . . .
Ripe for a takeover?
TiVo posts $10.2m loss, remains on deathwatch . . .
Ripe for a takeover?
What I said
That was my point in my earlier post. TIVO continues to loose money if the law suits continue to cost them I don't see how they will survive. So let E*, Verizon, & AT&T keep it up and someone can buy them cheap. Man if I had had stock in TIVO the other day when the price skyrocketed I would have sold it and walked away w/ the $$$ in hand.
That was my point in my earlier post. TIVO continues to loose money if the law suits continue to cost them I don't see how they will survive. So let E*, Verizon, & AT&T keep it up and someone can buy them cheap. Man if I had had stock in TIVO the other day when the price skyrocketed I would have sold it and walked away w/ the $$$ in hand.
This makes no sense to me. Its like saying Ted Bundy's lawyers had the opportunity to see what Charlie Manson's did when he was convicted. In reality, it makes TiVo's cases easier to work on as the bulk of their filings, research, etc. can be reused.
That's a great way of putting it! Maybe just maybe this will open some people's eyes around here.
wonder what happens to the tivo service if the company goes belly up?
i am seriously considering buy a tivo with lifetime service
i am seriously considering buy a tivo with lifetime service
Greg- this is an interesting concept and one I had debated posting, i.e. IF this is TIVO technology, Dish had no rights to it anyway and if Dish had licensed the technology, the economics would have been different. AGREED! HOWEVER:
The timing is such that the entire industry ( more than 3 companies working on R&D for it simultaneously) had developed this technology all nearly at the same time so it became an issue of who got to the USPO first. TIVO won. So in the real world of R&D- did anyone realy steal from the other? I don't think we know for a fact that Echostar hired an industrial espionage agent to break in and steal TIVO secrets. Ditto with Replay. So the entire discussion, in my opinion is just boring. and ditto for the derivative discussions as in the devil's advocate point above. Woulda shoulda coulda just doesn't cut it, therefore we have to have these court cases and therefore we decide at some future date who gets to suffer and benefit from a patent infringement. NOW, combine that with the fact that we get a court decision that is not unanimous and we have a real legal question as to what's right. In science, what's right is never a majority decision, democracy is a political decision, not a scientific one. What all my jibberish boils down to is that this has become a business battle and no longer has anything to do with who stole from whom. Charlie is constantly making business decisions on this and to date, my stock holder reports indicate that in the big picture he is doing the right thing.
Bob Haller- Go ahead, make my day, buy that lifetime TIVO deal. I have one here, bought maybe 10 years ago. I loaned it to my nephew. Oh, IIRC, the tivo needs to go online( mine is telephone line) to update the guide to work so I'd bet these TIVO LIfetimes will just quit working when TIVO finally is out of business.
Okay, but with a bit of Devil's Advocacy, there were competing patents for the telephone filed the same day. And the fact that only one patent was granted and it turned into the behemoth Bell Telephone, who defended that patent against infringement by multiple companies does factor into the discussion. So in the real world, I'd believe it does matter.Don Landis said:
No one ever said Dish Network or Echostar "hired an industrial espionage agent". However, they were late to the DVR game. The main players were TiVo, ReplayTV and Microsoft. Everyone else came to the dance late.Don Landis said:
Dish Network had an agreement with Microsoft, and booted them to the curb to develop their own in-house DVR's. Those DVR's contained the same media switch found in TiVo's patented product.
That needs clarification: there was an appeals court decision that was not unanimous, but sided with the trial court. Even in a non-unanimous decision, there isn't a "real legal question"; the decision stands.Don Landis said:
I think it's 2018.Jim5506 said:
Patents are for 17 years from date of issue. An inventor has 1 year from date of public disclosure to file. Smart patent attorneys will manage the time span from file date to issue date to be as long as possible.
In my former career, chemicals, patents were often delayed through trade secret process before filing to extend the protection time with some risk of theft. BUT the USPO did away with that practice with the 1 year rule. Chemical patents were difficult to replicate without espionage tactics. With electronics, dissection to discover a process was fairly easy and therefore the trade secret procedure was rarely used. Instead, patents were applied for as soon as possible to establish protection date. So, likely TIVO filed for it's patent about time of the actual invention creation.
And worth noting, just because a patent runs out doesn't end the possible of damage claims during the patent term. TIVO would still be able to collect, if awarded, on the entire life of, say the VIP series even if they won the trial after the patents expire.
This is why I firmly believe Dish must hold to the fight at this time because to admit defeat as our riffjim marine wants to do, surrender, would render Dish in a POW position of negotiation. While still holding its weapons of suit defense, Dish could negotiate with better leverage for any license deal or buy TIVO outright.
In my former career, chemicals, patents were often delayed through trade secret process before filing to extend the protection time with some risk of theft. BUT the USPO did away with that practice with the 1 year rule. Chemical patents were difficult to replicate without espionage tactics. With electronics, dissection to discover a process was fairly easy and therefore the trade secret procedure was rarely used. Instead, patents were applied for as soon as possible to establish protection date. So, likely TIVO filed for it's patent about time of the actual invention creation.
And worth noting, just because a patent runs out doesn't end the possible of damage claims during the patent term. TIVO would still be able to collect, if awarded, on the entire life of, say the VIP series even if they won the trial after the patents expire.
This is why I firmly believe Dish must hold to the fight at this time because to admit defeat as our riffjim marine wants to do, surrender, would render Dish in a POW position of negotiation. While still holding its weapons of suit defense, Dish could negotiate with better leverage for any license deal or buy TIVO outright.
Dish Seeks Approval to Design Around TiVo Recording Patent
C&P
Dish Seeks Approval to Design Around TiVo Recording Patent
March 10, 2010, 12:03 AM EST
March 10 (Bloomberg) -- Dish Network Corp. and EchoStar Corp., which lost an appeals court ruling last week that their digital-recording service infringes a TiVo Inc. patent, have a revised plan to design around the invention.
Details of the changed plan were filed under seal yesterday in federal court in Marshall, Texas. Dish and EchoStar are required to get pre-approval from the trial judge in the case after an earlier version was deemed little different than one found by a federal jury in 2006 to violate the TiVo patent.
An appeals court on March 4 upheld a lower court’s finding that the companies were still in violation of TiVo’s patent, even after claiming they had changed their technology enough to avoid infringement.
The court also upheld U.S. District Judge David Folsom’s ruling that Dish must get pre-approval before implementing any further changes to its service to avoid TiVo’s invention related to so-called time-warp technology that lets users record a TV program and play it back at the same time.
Last year, Folsom ordered Englewood, Colorado-based Dish to stop providing its digital video recorder service. That order was put on hold during the appeal and remains in effect while Dish and EchoStar, also based in Englewood, ask the appeals court to reconsider its decision.
Original Lawsuit
Dish is the second-biggest U.S. satellite-TV provider, behind D****TV Group Inc. The suit originally was filed against EchoStar Communications Inc., which oversaw digital set-top box manufacturing and satellite services businesses, and ran the Dish TV network. The businesses split into EchoStar and Dish Network Corp. in January 2008.
An EchoStar representative didn’t immediately return a message seeking comment after regular business hours yesterday.
Francie Bauer, a spokeswoman for Dish, declined to immediately comment. Michael Boccio, an outside spokesman for Alviso, California-based TiVo, said the company had no comment.
The appeal is TiVo v. EchoStar, 2009-1374, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Washington). The lower-court case is TiVo Inc. v. EchoStar Communications Corp., 04-cv-00001, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Texas (Marshall).
C&P
Dish Seeks Approval to Design Around TiVo Recording Patent
March 10, 2010, 12:03 AM EST
March 10 (Bloomberg) -- Dish Network Corp. and EchoStar Corp., which lost an appeals court ruling last week that their digital-recording service infringes a TiVo Inc. patent, have a revised plan to design around the invention.
Details of the changed plan were filed under seal yesterday in federal court in Marshall, Texas. Dish and EchoStar are required to get pre-approval from the trial judge in the case after an earlier version was deemed little different than one found by a federal jury in 2006 to violate the TiVo patent.
An appeals court on March 4 upheld a lower court’s finding that the companies were still in violation of TiVo’s patent, even after claiming they had changed their technology enough to avoid infringement.
The court also upheld U.S. District Judge David Folsom’s ruling that Dish must get pre-approval before implementing any further changes to its service to avoid TiVo’s invention related to so-called time-warp technology that lets users record a TV program and play it back at the same time.
Last year, Folsom ordered Englewood, Colorado-based Dish to stop providing its digital video recorder service. That order was put on hold during the appeal and remains in effect while Dish and EchoStar, also based in Englewood, ask the appeals court to reconsider its decision.
Original Lawsuit
Dish is the second-biggest U.S. satellite-TV provider, behind D****TV Group Inc. The suit originally was filed against EchoStar Communications Inc., which oversaw digital set-top box manufacturing and satellite services businesses, and ran the Dish TV network. The businesses split into EchoStar and Dish Network Corp. in January 2008.
An EchoStar representative didn’t immediately return a message seeking comment after regular business hours yesterday.
Francie Bauer, a spokeswoman for Dish, declined to immediately comment. Michael Boccio, an outside spokesman for Alviso, California-based TiVo, said the company had no comment.
The appeal is TiVo v. EchoStar, 2009-1374, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Washington). The lower-court case is TiVo Inc. v. EchoStar Communications Corp., 04-cv-00001, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Texas (Marshall).
What, the truth of whether something was physically stolen, or whether the grant matters? If the latter then we agree, the winner of the patent matters, but my point was about posters trying to make a moral issue claiming Dish stole from TIVO. Until criminal charges are brought on that and won, I say it is more of the politics of a majority vote on who wins and Dish didn't "steal" anything.
Greg- I do not know the actual dates involved but apparently you do so I defer to your knowledge on this but as you said, no one is accusing Dish of criminal activity. That I disagree with, Accusing someone of stealing regardless of the methods used, is a criminal accusation. That was the nature of the posts made in this thread and what I was addressing
In the 80's I developed on my own an underwater distance measuring sonar gun. I made and sold a few and then presented a paper on it to the NSS convention showing how this device could improve underwater mapping and surveying. A couple months later a company in Canada contacted me and threatened me with a suit for "stealing" their patent. My attorney contested that they could not prove that I had stolen anything. However we had to admit that their patent and my device were the same except in appearance. I had to cease all sales and development work on my own to avoid the suit. It was a business decision since there was little to no market I could see for the device. About 2 years later the company finally began selling a very nice device that worked well and sold for a third of what I sold my 3 units for. Their international patent was issued almost a year after that exchange took place. So why didn't I apply for patent?- Business reasons and I had no deep pockets. All I wanted to do is to map and survey underwater caves. The only reason why I made three units for sale was because a few other underwater surveyors begged me to make them one.
Even though your analogy doesn't really work (Bundy underwent three different trials in Utah, Colorado and Florida) I understand your point. It is pretty difficult to compare the structures and procedures of a criminal murder trial to a civil patent infringement lawsuit. I understand what you are saying. What I am saying is that apparently both during the trial and during the contempt phase Dish's lawyers made some procedural blunders that might have got them out of jail and you can be sure Verizon and AT&T's lawyers saw and noted those.
Does It make it easier on TIVO? In some ways yes, they have the confidence that have won one and have a blueprint for doing it again, and they also got the benefit of seeing the blunders Dish's lawyers made and can also learn from them. I do think that the nature of the mistakes makes the learning from them more valuable to the defense than the plaintiff. While some of the research, filings, etc can be recycled I seriously doubt it is anywhere near the bulk of them as there are different circumstances and different infringement claims for each of the two new suits.
Well said. And Dish receive some fairly strong support from the Patent Office last summer regarding the validity of the TIVO patents.
Yahoo! Message Boards - TiVo Inc. (TIVO) - TIVO's PATENT CLAIMS NOW REJECTED! (Claims: 31, 61. US PATENT OFFICE IN 08/2009)
I assume you are not aware that DISH invited TiVo in to show off there wares under the premise the two would work towards a partnership. Then DISH reverse engineered one of their devices (that TiVo loaned them) and looked at the source code; afterward, DISH decided they didn't need TiVo and could develop their own in-house DVR. So given those details, to me it sure seems that DISH stole TiVo's intellectual property -- and courts seem to agree.
Like Greg said, DISH was late to the DVR partly and not developing their DVR technology at the same time as TiVo (and ReplyTV) were.
What happened to ReplyTV lifetime users when they went belly up? That might give you a clue to what might happen with TiVo if that were to ever happen.
