Just came across this. Guess Charlie wants to keep the fight going.
Dish Network reopens TiVo patent dispute - Yahoo! News
Dish Network reopens TiVo patent dispute - Yahoo! News
Well, TiVo did approach Dish Network back in 1998 about partnering for a DVR. They left a prototype there. And it is believed in a court of law that somehow the Dish Network engineers reverse-engineered the prototype in order to make their version of a DVR.navychop said:I hope Dish wins. Even more, I hope Tivo loses. To me, it seems they are trying to win on legalisms and not innovation.
Of course.darrencp22 said:Maybe dish is trying to drag this along. Maybe Tivo will go under by the time this reaches a conclusion?
Well, until the Court of Appeals ruled otherwise, the jury in the trial said that Dish Network practically copied the hardware implementation. However, because of the way the instructions to the jury were worded, the Court of Appeals set them aside, leaving only the software claims as infringing. It is possible the hardware claims will be re-addressed by the District Court. But what one needs to remember is that TiVo filed the claim on their implementation of recording one show while watching another pre-recorded show back in 1998, before the implementation of any of the other DVR's, and that patent withstood review, and in one case was reviewed twice.navychop said:The DVR is obvious. Too many patents are issued for too little new. If Dish stole code, line by line, or exactly copied an interface, fine.
The mind boggles. We could do this with 2 VCRs for decades before that. What about their implementation was patentable? Doing it digitally? Doing it in one box rather than two?But what one needs to remember is that TiVo filed the claim on their implementation of recording one show while watching another pre-recorded show back in 1998, before the implementation of any of the other DVR's, and that patent withstood review, and in one case was reviewed twice.
I shall now patent "Space Warp" technology, where we combine 2 of anything into one box, while eliminating redundant components (and charging less).
You cannot take two patents and then patent that combination as a separate patent. This is as far from what the Time Warp patent is all about.Sammy033 said:I thought the supreme court ruled a couple months ago that obvious combining of two things into one is not granted patent law protections in terms of preventing others from making other devices that do the same thing.