And what would be his basis for going after these companies? IIRC, these other companies have binding agreements/already settled with TiVO and have licensed this technology. Just because Charlie buys TiVo doesn't mean these agreements would go away.
As far as buying TiVo goes, there are a lot of things affecting this, not the least of which is the rumored AT&T purchase of Echostar. I don't forsee Dish losing it's DVR's, but I do think the cost to keep them just went up - assuming the Appeals Court turns down Dish's appeal.
When companies want things to happen, like a corporate marriage, they can make it happen. There are all sorts of financial legerdemain and infinitely complex schemes some involving cash not much cash or no cash at all. Stock in the purchasing company and seats on that company's board is an extremely common method of
acquiring a company (perhaps I should not have said the word buy, as "acquiring" is more accurate), especially when it involves a much bigger company (Echostar) acquiring a much smaller company (Tivo). Tivo is still struggling, and a good acquisition offer involving Echostar would be Tivo's dream come true because they, like everyone else in business, got in to make whole lot of money.
There are still some large companies that, at least I last head of, still do not have any agreements with Tivo: Scientific Atlanta and Motorola for two. Please correct me if I am wrong on that. Once the Echostar matter is put away, you can count on Tivo to going after Moxie, and others, by using this court case as leverage. Any other company might be foolish, even if they know they did not use Tivo technology, to fight Tivo after a clear defeat for Echostar (this case is not over yet, so no threats until it is over).
Let us not forget, that the core issue is not Tivo's legitimacy of it patents, but if Echostar "stole" Tivo's patented technology, and that matter was determined by jurors who were out of their depth regarding complex computer code (we all are out of our depth regarding that, really) and, instead, focused on the fact (and plaintiff's attorney's focused on this, as well) that Tivo
intentionally left behind one of their units (strange behavior for the extremely patent protective Tivo. Could they have left it behind for a possible lawsuit?) at Dish Network after a demonstration. Tivo never asked for it back. Agreed, Dish doesn't know what happened to the Tivo unit, either, so many years ago, but it does not prove that Dish used Tivo's patented technology.
Let us remember that the Patent office did invalidate Tivo's hardware patents, so this is now a question of software.
I read an article in which 2 of the Tyler, Texas jurors explained their logic and that of the other jurors in reaching their decision in favor of Tivo, and it is summarized as this:
DishPlayer 7000 is a fiasco.
Tivo leaves unit at Dish Network after demonstration.
New Dish 50X and subsequent DVR's are a success.
Therefore, Dish "stole" Tivo patented technology from the unit left behind at Dish.
Aside from the above being troubling logic, none of it has anything to do with
how the Dish DVR's achieves Time Warp and how the Tivo DVR's achieve Time Warp. For that you need to know not the English language, but the computer language, and even some computer scientists are incapable of interpreting that language into our plain language because it gets lost in the translation. But a jury of computer scientists are the only people who have
any chance of answering the real question put before the court. The rest of us haven't a clue.
Add to that the U.S. Patent's Office tepid admission, after government investigation and testimony before congress a few years ago, that they have issued patents regarding computer code that are too broad and, in many cases, the office had no clue as to what they were asked to patent but issued a patent, anyway. Perhaps Echostar did use Tivo technology. In truth, we'll never really know.
