TiVo files patent infringement lawsuits against AT&T and Verizon

[Thomas22]

I found this about Justice Scalia and the Eastern District of Texas.

Thanks. I guess he did say something similar.

 

[Thomas22]

In light of the distinct possibility that Tivo's "389" patent will be invalidated by the PTO, do you really think that filing suit against Verizon and AT&T was a good move? The legal costs fighting these two giants will be staggering especially with the ongoing legal battle with E*.

There probably won't be much in the way of expenses early on. If there is no "final" action from the PTO invalidating the patent fairly early, the judge will probably not postpone the trial pending TiVo's patent invalidation appeals which could take ten years. Judge Spencer refused to delay proceedings in the Blackberry lawsuit for that very reason. He didn't want to wait ten years to get it resolved.

 

[Ken F]

I don't know anything about the other two patents, but with the one you reference here, there is no way TiVo wins this. The patent isn't on over-shoot per se. Meaning that Verizon just having over-shoot compensation doesn't violate the patent. From what I understand the patent is on the algorithm that TiVo uses in their over-shoot functionality.

Just FYI, here are some of the details of that one particular patent:

Automatic playback overshoot correction system - Patent 7493015

Again the patent isn't on over-shoot compensation per se. It's on the algorithm that learns from the user where to place the buffer when coming out of ffwd.

It's probably worth noting that patent doesn't necessarily cover just the way TiVo does it. A patent can cover several methods. TiVo has two different patents on overshoot correction:

Automatic playback overshoot correction system (7,493,015)
Automatic playback overshoot correction system (6,850,691)

I briefly scanned the contents of the first (linked above) and it discusses three methods. The last method sounds to me like it would cover Verizon's implementation.

 

[harshness]

TiVo has $250 million in cash, no debt, and a very low cash burn rate.

Don't you think spending hundreds of dollars an hour getting knocked around in court might be burning through the money?

 

[Albie2]

Don't you think spending hundreds of dollars an hour getting knocked around in court might be burning through the money?

Hundreds? Don't you think Morgan Chu et al are more in the thousands per hour for the whole team?

 

[Ken F]

Hundreds? Don't you think Morgan Chu et al are more in the thousands per hour for the whole team?

I looks like Verizon got the 'B' team with a new litigator and AT&T got the 'A' team with Irell & Manella (Morgan Chu, etc).

The AT&T DVR runs Microsoft's STB DVR software, so that isn't entirely surprising.

 

[riffjim4069]

Is there any online repository for all the court eFiled documents, motions, appearances, etc. in this case?

 

[grydlok]

Please don't treat Verizon like they are innocent. They where suing people left and right over VOIP patents.

 

[lee78221]

that because they have not been developing new products...they just have to pay retainer fees to their legal council

Who? Tivo?Microsoft?Other?

 

[Barry Erick]

I still say the old Grass Valley/Tektronic's Profile systems for Broadcast beat Tivo at this. They have software that can automatically record at a given time, can playback while recording shows and can playback a recording 2 seconds after it starts a recording. Pause, rewind and start. In my book, based on dates of release, TIVO stole the Tektronics patents.

 

[Thomas22]

I still say the old Grass Valley/Tektronic's Profile systems for Broadcast beat Tivo at this. They have software that can automatically record at a given time, can playback while recording shows and can playback a recording 2 seconds after it starts a recording. Pause, rewind and start. In my book, based on dates of release, TIVO stole the Tektronics patents.

TiVo patented particular methods, not the entire concept of DVRs. Ideas can't be patented, methods and processes can be patented.

 

[Ken F]

I still say the old Grass Valley/Tektronic's Profile systems for Broadcast beat Tivo at this. They have software that can automatically record at a given time, can playback while recording shows and can playback a recording 2 seconds after it starts a recording. Pause, rewind and start. In my book, based on dates of release, TIVO stole the Tektronics patents.

TiVo's applications do describe prior art and how their patent differs from earlier DVR patents:

The use of digital computer systems to solve this problem has been suggested. U.S. Pat. No. 5,371,551 issued to Logan et al., on Dec. 6, 1994, teaches a method for concurrent video recording and playback. It presents a microprocessor controlled broadcast and playback device. Said device compresses and stores video data onto a hard disk. However, this approach is difficult to implement because the processor requirements for keeping up with the high video rates makes the device expensive and problematic. The microprocessor must be extremely fast to keep up with the incoming and outgoing video data.

It would be advantageous to provide a multimedia time warping system that gives the user the ability to simultaneously record and play back TV broadcast programs. It would further be advantageous to provide a multimedia time warping system that utilizes an approach that decouples the microprocessor from the high video data rates, thereby reducing the microprocessor and system requirements which are at a premium.

That's the core of their "invention." It's applicable to DVRs with low-cost, low-performance embedded CPUs that implement the method. It may not be applicable to PC applications.

The two key patents for simultaneous recording and playback on high-performance processors expire in 2011 and 2012, respectively. At that point, there may not be anything stopping a company from building a DVR based on say, an Intel CPU with integrated graphics. I bet it could be done today at a $100 premium to existing DVRs, using a dual-core Intel Atom CPU and Nvidia's ION graphics.

 

[harshness]

The problem with Ken F's rationalization is that what was once the domain of primitive central processors is now handled by dedicated processors that can decode at rates much higher than most encoders can fit the content in the available bandwidth. The other advantage that modern equipment has is that its content comes to it pre-encoded.

At one point or another, most DVRs can play as they record pretty much without intervention of the embedded processor. All that needs to be maintained is the filesystem and some pointers.