patent posts
by Darren Murph 
posted Oct 29th 2009 at 9:14AM
by Nilay Patel posted Sep 5th 2009 at 7:28PM
Okay, so it's not the cool billion dollars in damages we'd heard TiVo was asking for, but $200 million ain't chump change if you're broke, you know? That's the amount in contempt damages TiVo will get if EchoStar loses its upcoming appeal in the endless time warp patent case, bringing the total amount of money on the table to nearly $400 million. As usual, that means virtually nothing for the average Dish or TiVo customer, but at least the lawyers involved can all buy new Audis for the winter now.by Richard Lawler posted Aug 26th 2009 at 8:13PM
We'll let the analysts make sense of TiVo's new projection that it will lose $8 to $10 million in the third quarter, larger than Wall Street expectations while projected revenues are lower -- we're too busy adding Verizon and AT&T to the patent battlemap. Today it filed complaints against both for violating three of its DVR-related patents -- Nos. 6,233,389 B1 ("Multimedia Time Warping System"), 7,529,465 B2 ("System for Time Shifting Multimedia Content Streams"), and 7,493,015 B1 ("Automatic Playback Overshoot Correction System") if you must know -- seeking damages for past infringement and a permanent injunction. We'd assumed it would wait until settling things with DISH to push forward against other companies, but it looks like we're not the only ones getting impatient. Beyond the legal slapfight there's a few nuggets for the bleep bloop faithful, with the Comcast TiVo on-line scheduler beginning to roll out in Boston plus further expansions on the way and the due-in-2010 DirecTV HD TiVo still on track -- we'll need a few seasons of Law & Order queued up before this mess ever gets resolved.by Richard Lawler posted Aug 5th 2009 at 9:04AM
You knew it couldn't be over, right? The long running TiVo vs. DISH / Echostar patent case took a not-so-new twist yesterday when the Patent and Trademark Office issued a preliminary finding rejecting some of the claims of its Time Warp patent. While DISH was pleased, considering the PTO's conclusions as "highly relevant" to its ongoing appeal, TiVo issued a statement calling this step "not unusual" pointing out that the exact same thing happened when its patent was reexamined in 2005 (and subsequently upheld in 2007,) and that the next step in the process is where it will be able to present its explanation for the first time. All you need to know is that it will still be a while before anyone involved (except the two company's lawyers) are cashing any large checks, or gets their DVR taken away.by Nilay Patel posted Jul 13th 2009 at 10:41PM
by Steven Kim posted Jul 10th 2009 at 10:09AM
by Richard Lawler posted Jul 2nd 2009 at 11:19AM
News of another delay should be absolutely no surprise to anyone that's followed the details of this case, as DISH was granted a stay by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit pending its appeal of a $190 million ruling in favor of TiVo which will allow its customers to continue using their DVRs, at least for now. For its part, TiVo repeated its praise of the "thorough and well-reasoned decision finding EchoStar in contempt of court for violating the injunction and awarding further damages" and is confident the ruling will be upheld, again. Did anyone really think this one would just end so easily?by Nilay Patel posted Jun 22nd 2009 at 2:12PM
by Richard Lawler posted Jun 18th 2009 at 9:40AM
by Ben Drawbaugh posted Jun 10th 2009 at 6:34PM
One of our favorite rumors rides again, but this time it's Dish that might be interested in buying TiVo. The new twist this time though is the motivation, and we can totally see how Dish would love to make this happen. The problem of course is that TiVo isn't interested in any such shenanigans and has gone as far as to write a poison pill into its bylaws. Our friend Davis Freeberg has been writing about TiVo's poison pill for years and more recently, at about the same time as the latest court decision came down against Dish, he saw some interesting traffic in his web server logs from none other than a Dish Network IP. No clue who the user was, but they spent some time reading up on TiVo's poison pill. Davis is no lawyer, but it is his understanding that if Dish attempted to take over TiVo, it'd cost them about $71 per share -- which comes to about $7.5 Billion. This is about seven times what the stock is actually worth and although we'd be shocked if this happened, we have to admit that crazier things have.by Nilay Patel posted Jun 3rd 2009 at 7:45PM 
It's the case that never ends -- the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has issued a temporary delay of the injunction and fine handed down yesterday in the EchoStar / TiVo lawsuit while it considers an appeal, meaning that DISH owners with older DVRs won't have to worry about losing their pause-and-rewind functionality at least for now. That pretty much means we're back in stasis with this one, with even more delay to come if the appeal is granted. That's cool, we needed a nap anyway.by Donald Melanson posted Jun 2nd 2009 at 8:23PM
We're a bit hesitant to call this one done given the history involved, but a federal judge in Texas has dealt DISH / EchoStar yet another serious blow in its long-standing dispute with TiVo, and this time he's taken a number of other measures that could cause EchoStar to finally rethink its workaround-litigate strategy. The big setback for EchoStar, however, is the one-two punch of $190 million in damages it's been ordered to pay TiVo and an order to disable the "infringing function" on all but 193,000 DVRs now in the hands of subscribers. The judge also found that EchoStar's recently-implemented workaround technology still violated the patent in question and, as a result, he's ordered EchoStar to inform the court before it decides to try its hand at another "design-around" of the infringing patent. For its part, TiVo says that it is "extremely gratified by the Court's well reasoned and thorough decision," while DISH / EchoStar would only say that it plans to appeal the court's decision and file a motion to stay the order with a federal appeals court.by Richard Lawler posted May 20th 2009 at 9:34PM
by Richard Lawler posted Apr 10th 2009 at 5:14PM
Just when it looked like the long-running patent dispute was tipping Vizio's way, the U.S. International Trade Commission has ruled in favor of Funai, issuing an order to block imports of Vizio HDTVs. According to Bloomberg the ban is still eligible to be reviewed by President Obama while the patent case itself is still being reviewed by an appeals court, but if Vizio wants to keep its shipments flowing it will have to post a bond of $2.50 per television. We've put a call in to Vizio to find out what this means for its immediate future -- and that sweet LED backlit display from CES -- and confirmed that while this order goes into effect immediately, you should still be able to find sets on shelves and they will continue to do business as usual during the presidential review period, but feel free to read its press release in response after the break for more details.by Darren Murph posted Mar 15th 2009 at 8:31PM
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