TiVo Patent Victory Over Dish Network Upheld

Thomas Hawk writes "An appeals court today shot down Dish Network's last chance to avoid a multi-million lawsuit verdict won by TiVo over their time shifting DVR technology. In addition to having to pay TiVo a minimum of $92 million, Dish Network will also now have to honor a court injunction to turn off DVR software to most of their customers. I hope Dish Network customers like commercials with their daily dose of Dr. Phil."

Dish DVR

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI this has no effect on anyone with a newer model Dish DVR, i.e. they aren't going to take it away from you. New software was pushed out 6 months ago to replace the infringing software. If you have a real old one, now is a good time to upgrade.

Responses

[ArkiMage]

Tivo's:
http://investor.tivo.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=304285 [tivo.com]

Dish's:
http://dish.client.shareholder.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=304293 [shareholder.com]

The latter includes these tidbits:

The decision, however, will have no effect on our current or future customers because EchoStar's engineers have developed and deployed 'next-generation' DVR software to our customers' DVRs. This improved software is fully operational, has been automatically downloaded to current customers, and does not infringe the Tivo patent at issue in the Federal Circuit's ruling.

"All DISH Network customers can continue to use their DVRs without any interruption or changes to the award-winning DVR features and services provided by DISH Network.

"We intend to appeal the Federal Circuit's ruling to the United States Supreme Court."

RTFA

[mrsam]

No, Dish can (and if you RTFAed, they will) appeal to the Supremes.

But, true, Dish has a tough hill to climb. The Supremes only accept a small percentage of all appeals. Dish's goose is mostly cooked.

Re:new software was pushed out 6 months ..

[Teran9]

You can look up the press releases from Dish that say that they have updated their software. They are appealing because they don't want to have to shell out the bucks for past transgressions.

Re:This will just make tivo look bad

[chris234]

DirecTV used to, but that's irrelevant as this is about Dish Network.

Re:Dish DVR

[Burgundy Advocate]

Actually, 'next-generation' software was pushed out for all models. Nothing is going to stop working. The article description is highly incorrect.

Re:Dish DVR

[danielsfca2]

I don't know about you or your parents, but our Dish DVR wasn't hard to use in the slightest. It was far superior to the crap Comcast pushes.

And I'm sure plenty 60-year-olds, no offense intended towards my elders, couldn't figure out how to do more than pause and rewind on TiVo either.

(I've never had a TiVo because I refuse to pay $15/mo for the rest of my life for a few kilobytes of guide data. When I moved to a no-dish apartment, I built a PC-based DVR that kicks ass).

Re:Die, TiVo

[vrmlguy]

Well, not me personally but the guys I went to college with in the mid 90s. They had cable fed into TV tuners and streaming to drives, controlled automatically by TV listens off the Internet. This was an obvious convergence of 1) TV tuner cards, 2) fast-enough processing at affordable prices, and 3) cheap-enough storage. TiVo came along and boxed it all up, then patented what other people had already been doing.

Except that you haven't described TiVo's patent. They cover using a circular buffer so you can watch while you're streaming, without saving to a file.

Even thought I own a DishNetwork receiver, I think that TiVo was right to get their patent and Dish Network shouldn't have fought as hard as they did. TiVo isn't a bunch of patent trolls; they built and marketed hardware which other people copied.

Re:The shit's going to hit the fan

[Jonner]

You're painting with some very broad strokes there. I receive completely DRM-free and free of cost HDTV broadcast all the time. AFAIK, the FCC neither requires nor allows any kind of DRM on ATSC broadcast, though it has been threatened and defeated (hopefully indefinitely) in the form of the "broadcast flag."

Also, IPTV does not refer to any particular system or standard, but just the general approach of sending TV over IP. I don't know how many different IPTV systems there are, but there are probably some that don't use DRM.

Just to nitpick: HDMI doesn't require HDCP all the time, which is why you can plug an HDMI display into a DVI output using a simple converter cable and you can plug a DVI display into an HDMI output as long as the signal is not HDCP encrypted.

However, I do agree with your main point that DRM is becoming more pervasive and most people buying into it are completely unaware or apathetic. Because I'm opposed to DRM on grounds of principle and because it limits my DIY options, I get my TV and movies from broadcast ATSC and DVDs (the DRM is inconsequential) instead of digital cable and BluRay. When bypassing BluRay DRM is as easy to bypass as CSS, I'll get some of those. Of course, the former options are a lot less expensive too, and I like saving money. I am very aware that not very many people are going to limit their options like I do.

Re:Die, TiVo

[netringer]

TiVo has patents on the "jump to tick" on the timeline and the 8 second jump back among other things.

No. Those features DID NOT exist until Tivo came out with them, and you won't see them on any other other PVR - due to the patent.

TiVo's UI and remote and functionality is the absolute best thought out.

I'm going to have to give it up soon, thanks to DirecTV and TiVo divorcing, and TiVo deciding to diss legacy (Lifetime) customers with the removal of discount rates for additional units.

I really hate that situation.

I'll be signing with AT&T UVerse as soon as they get my house address listed as green in the database. I wish they used CableCARDs so I could keep my HD TiVo. *sigh*

Re:Unlikely

[Achromatic1978]

Replying to this to get a post near top:

DISH WILL NOT have "to turn off DVR to most of its customers". Anyone using the 622 or 722 (what they ship now as their DVR offerings) is NOT affected. Software was upgraded months ago specifically to get around the patent. If you have a far older DVR, then all this means, is you'll get a free upgrade to the new model, rather than paying for it. A pain in the ass though the patent is, a travesty this is not.

Mmm, pimping your own misleading blog FTW! It's not like many people in the comments of his own blog entry he submitted didn't point out this RATHER MAJOR DISCREPANCY... but oh noes! Removing scaremongering does not help pageviews, does it?

Re:Its not going away

[mr_matticus]

Actually, infringement is one method of violation, so you do both. Infringement is more specific and usually the case with a patent claim, but violation is not incorrect.