TiVo Relaunching As a Patent Troll? 335
An anonymous reader writes "TiVo's quarterly call was a bit more dramatic than usual. While they continue to lose customers and innovate 'at a very unhurried pace,' TiVo seeks a repeat DISH Network performance in going after AT&T (T) and Verizon (VZ) for infringement. Basically, TiVo's current business model appears to be ad sales and patent trolling."
How is this a Patent Troll? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not like TiVo is a company set up to collect patents and then chase them down. They've had products on the market for years, would by many be said to have created the home digital recorder (and thus have attained many patents), still have products on the market, and other providers have created products that are now losing TiVo business.
So if the patent is valid (I haven't read it) then surely TiVo have as much right to go after infringers as any other company that has its patents on its products infringed?
Re:TiVo was cool... (Score:3, Insightful)
Trlling? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not trolling if your patent truly covers an innovation, and your competitors copy it. In this case it's called "protecting your rights".
Re:How is this a Patent Troll? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not a good summary. (Score:5, Insightful)
So this should be tagged "!troll" "badsummary" and "bitterposter" because I'm not entirely sure that this summary does it any justice. First, TiVo is not a troll for at least the reason that they actual manufacture products embodying the patent, have done so for a long time, and actually have revenue related to both hardware and subscription fees. [citation needed ;)].
Second, together with ReplayTV (now Motorola?), TiVo really was an innovator in this space. Whether these particular patents were innovative was at least decided with respect to DishNetwork. AT&T and Verizon will now get their chance to try to invalidate it. Who knows, maybe they have some damn good art.
Not all that trollish! (Score:5, Insightful)
Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's probably a better business model than
1. Spend lots of money to invent the mousetrap
2. Spend more money to make it better
3. Allow cable/satellite to build 80% of your ideas into their own equipment and cut you out of any revenues
4. Profit
Re:It's Netscape VS MS Again.. (Score:5, Insightful)
NOT a Patent Troll (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's Netscape VS MS Again.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would anyone bother buying a tivo when they can just get it right with their cable bill?
Because the cable company charges usurious rates and extra fees for a DVR with a crap interface that's littered with bugs? The only thing stopping me from switching to Tivo currently is on demand. You have to keep a box from the cable company for that to work, since cable card does not support it, and they charge you for it.
Longing for the good ol' days (Score:4, Insightful)
As someone who is a DirectTV subscriber I can only hint at how much myself and every other DVR user they have that I have talked to miss Tivo when it was DirecTV's DVR offering. This "homebrew" or whatever DirectTV is calling it blows on a level hard to describe.
Re:TiVo was cool... (Score:2, Insightful)
In my experience, average people still do watch a lot of TV, but it seems they're becoming more focused, viewing TV as a means of accessing specific shows rather than as a general leisure activity ("I want to watch the next episode of X" vs. "I think I'll relax in front of the TV"). The American-Idol style shows, particularly America's Got Talent, still seem to be doing quite well.
Although I observed this mostly in middle aged and older audiences, so perhaps the viewing patterns aren't the same for the younger generation.
Re:Not all that trollish! (Score:3, Insightful)
Agreed. TiVo wouldn't pass the purity-or-death Richard Stallman no-compromises test, but let's face it-- the cable industry cheated TiVo by locking them out, using all sorts of non-competitive practices including subsidized PVRs, turning CableCard into a joke, etc.
TiVo is definitely doing something I don't love, but they are essentially fighting douchebaggery with douchebaggery.
Re:Not all that trollish! (Score:1, Insightful)
I know how the system work. Guess what? Its 2009. The tivo has been out for TEN YEARS. Thats an eternity in the electronics world. The current system that gives monopologies for 14-20 years is ridiculous. Tivo had its time.
Re:How is this a Patent Troll? (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok, then AT&T and Verizon should simply switch to offering standard TV and "On Demand" television shows, and not utilize a DVR in the home. Problem solved.
Or they can wait until TiVo's patent expires or they can pay licensing fees to TiVo. That's the way the patent system is supposed to work!
Re:How is this a Patent Troll? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How is this a Patent Troll? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How is this a Patent Troll? (Score:4, Insightful)
IMO if you're trying to collect on an obvious idea, you're a patent troll. I doubt there's a single slashdotter here (except maybe NYCL) who couldn't have made a DVR out of an old laptop, a few roofing nails and a bananna. And most of us could have done it without the nails and bananna.
Interesting, if so why didn't you do? It is very easy to say things are obvious after the fact. For me it is obvious that planes can fly, and dead obvious why, that was not the case back then.
Now, if there is prior art, and if someone proves that WHEN they made it, is was pretty obvious how to do it efficient, kudos, and the patent will get invalid. If not, they have the right to go after anyone.
Re:TiVo was cool... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How is this a Patent Troll? (Score:3, Insightful)
The home digital recorder is a reflection of the state of the art in PC hardware and systems software.
It doesn't represent anything patent worthy. The fact that Tivo managed to
get some patents out of it just shows the inherent unsuitability of our
current patent office.
Their patent litigation is simply the result of not being able
to compete in a marketplace of mediocre competitors that just
happen to be gatekeepers for most of Tivo's potential customers.
Tivo can't compete with "free" on the lowend and can't compete
with "flexible and powerful" on the highend. The competition has
been getting better while Tivo has been stagnating.
Re:Let's think about this... (Score:5, Insightful)
.... you can sit on your ass, hire some lawyers, and soak up millions via your government granted monopoly.
That's what the cable companies do.
Or you can roll up your sleeves and work your ass off innovating, servicing customers, and building up a customer base
That's what TiVO did.
Sadly, it looks like they're quickly going out of business. The government should have mandated a universal standard for Satellite and Cable boxes so that TiVO (and any other manufacturer) could easily interface. Instead, we have a slapdash mix of ever-changing technologies like ATSC, QAM, SDV, etc and it's very difficult to design to a moving target (as anyone who has attempted to use a TiVO with CableCard knows).
Re:TiVo was cool... (Score:3, Insightful)
but when there's only a few good things to watch (and/or several good things on at the same time),
That's good news for the consumer. TV networks are well known to put good stuff on when other networks do, and crap when other networks do, so you have to pick what good show you want to watch because all the good stuff is on at the same time on different stations. (prime time [wikipedia.org]) Time shifting adds a whole lot of goodness to the consumer.
Re:How is this a Patent Troll? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, that's the thing. If TiVo has a patent on time-shifting using a harddrive, then that is what the patent covers. We may not like it, but then we should try to change the patent system instead of calling companies that try to defend the patents that they use in actual products "trolls".
You may not believe, that you should have to pay a fee just to use an SUV in London - but those are the rules that society has agreed upon. You have two options - get the rules changed or face the music when you don't follow the rules.
Now, if this was targeted at individual people building their own home made DVR, we could talk about trolling even though patents also cover those things. But here we're talking about AT&T and Verizon, two companies with a market cap of $156 billion [yahoo.com] and $88 billion [yahoo.com] respectively. They should know better. Okay, it's AT&T and Verizon - from what we hear about them on Slashdot, I doubt they DO know better. And if 10% of what we hear about here is true, they sure as hell don't deserve us defending them.
Re:Not all that trollish! (Score:2, Insightful)
I know how the system work. Guess what? Its 2009. The tivo has been out for TEN YEARS. Thats an eternity in the electronics world. The current system that gives monopologies for 14-20 years is ridiculous. Tivo had its time.
OK, so you don't agree with the patent system for electronics. How does that make TiVo a patent troll?
Re:How is this a Patent Troll? (Score:3, Insightful)
London charging a congestion tax is nothing like Tivo trying to collect from anyone who remotely thinks of shifting television content around with a magnetic storage device.
Re:TiVo was cool... (Score:3, Insightful)
Only a total idiot would watch (un)reality TV. That doesn't dispute your assesment of its popularity.
This is not patent trolling. (Score:5, Insightful)
Technology was not being developed because the people with the power did not want it ruining their business. (i.e. TV and cable/satelite tv execs)
Finally, innovative customers risked their own hard earned cash and developed the technology.
It immediately became a huge success. A new word was formed - to tivo it.
Finally the cable execs realized that they were losing business so they used their installed monopoly on black boxes to take over the business. They tried hard to ignore the copyrighted new word and replace it with "dvr it". Too bad dvr has no vowel.
The innovator that created the business could not compete with the installed monopoly base of black boxes. They tried to pass laws to let them sell the black boxes, but the cable companies effectively weakened those laws. They got destroyed not because they did not have a superior product but simply because of the monopoly factors (i.e. I can buy a Tivo but I still have to pay the cable company to rent a cable box - why pay twice?)
This is why patents exist - to protect the profits of the inventors that actually took the risks and created the product from the slimy large businesses that come in after the product is created and steal customers away.
Re:How is this a Patent Troll? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:TiVo was cool... (Score:5, Insightful)
BUT, other companies are still pedaling their hardware that infringes on Tivo's (still valid) hardware patents. Tivo enabled certain things that everyone was chasing after for years. should they be able to profit by copying? this is what the patent system was supposed to do, reward innovators with a temporary monopoly, and grant legal leverage to support that temporary monopoly.
this is the patent system working as it should, for hardware inventions that have been reduced to practice.
Re:TiVo was cool... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How is this a Patent Troll? (Score:3, Insightful)
But, you mention: That's how anybody would have done it if they were working on the same problem
Thats the thing. The patent system rewards you for working on the problem. So, anyone else could have gotten the patent first if they had taken the time to work on the problem. but, they didn't. The patent system is designed to provide insentive to create.
Re:TiVo was cool... (Score:2, Insightful)
Nobody wants a good but low rated Firefly; they all want a mega-hits like Seinfeld
Seinfield didn't start off as a hit; it struggled for a season or two before it found a solid audience. Fox didn't give Firefly that luxury; they showed the episodes out of order and moved it around and pre-empted it several times, then canceled it before showing all the episodes or giving it a chance to find its audience (or giving its audience a chance to find it). Typical for today's corporations, concerned only for short-term profits.
Re:How is this a Patent Troll? (Score:1, Insightful)
Why do you think not? They invented and implemented it. Before TiVo there was only your VCR.
Re:How is this a Patent Troll? (Score:2, Insightful)
What isn't Obvious in hindsight?
For me? Calculus.
Re:How is this a Patent Troll? (Score:4, Insightful)
The whole purpose of the patent system is to encourage innovation. In exchange for a temporary exclusive use of an idea, the idea is made public and later is usable by all. This encourages both innovation and openness. The alternative is secrecy.
Re:How is this a Patent Troll? (Score:5, Insightful)
I do believe that Rosa Parks [wikipedia.org] did one of those things and was a large part of the reason the other thing happened ...
She didn't attack the arresting officer, she didn't call him a thug, she didn't try to set the bus on fire. She faced the music.
See - no name calling.
See - she was willing to face the music. She worked with Martin Luther King Jr. [wikipedia.org], another person willing to face the music to change the rules. A man who told his followers that when they would be hit with clubs and fire hoses, they shouldn't t fight back but just keep on marching. A man who wasn't afraid to be arrested for civil disobedience.
Now, I realise that the reason you brought up bus thing was to "shame" me by liking me to the supporters of Jim Crow laws, which is why I've linked to both Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. - it's rare to see examples of people who are willing to fight the establishment when their own freedom are put at risk. Most will back down at the threat of being jailed. These wouldn't. That's why I linked to their Wiki entries - now you can read up on what they actually did. That way you don't have to make a fool of yourself again.
That being said, it's rather pathetic that you liken the actions of two multi billion dollar companies apparently breaking patent laws to avoid paying money to a company that barely breaks the billion dollar mark [yahoo.com] (AT&T + Veriozon: $244B, TiVo: 1B) to that of the civil rights movement. What next - are vegetarians or amateur painters to be likened to Hitler?
These two things (civil rights and patent suits between companies) are about as different as day and yellow. Like I said - if TiVo were suing people who built their own DVRs, we might start to talk about that being bad, but TiVo as a company not only creates and sells DVR devices, they also have patents on them. And if another company (especially companies that are worth almost 160 times as much) wants to create similar products, they must either work around those patents or license them from the patent holder. TiVo claims AT&T and Verizon have done neither.
And AT&T and Verizon don't need you to fight their fights for them. They'd just as soon shoot out your knees to steal your money if they could get away with it. If they don't like the patent in question (which they apparently don't) they can fight it in court or they can bribe^wconvince congress to change the rules. And if they accomplish the latter, don't expect AT&T and Verizon to come to your door with a heartfelt thank you and a discount. You're more likely to receive a cease and desist for breaking one of their patents or not using their networks.
Re:TiVo was cool... (Score:4, Insightful)
TiVO was a fantanstic invention. The problem is that it just can't compete against carrier-subsidized hardware.
You go to your Cable or Satellite TV operator and get an HD DVR for an extra $10 - 15 per month (versus a standard box) and no up-front hardware costs. Or you can buy an HD TiVO for $300 plus pay another $12.95 per month for TiVO service and $4 to $10 per month for two CableCards to work with your carrier, and still not be able to access video-on-demand services. As you can see, there's just no ROI to buying a TiVO, and only a die-hard TiVO evangelist would spend on the hardware if the carrier's box is free and monthly costs are the same or less.
That leaves TiVO with only one asset to capitalize on over the long term: their intellectual property. If indeed they own valid patents on storing TV programming to hard disk then they are not only entitled, but required as a public company, to protect and capitalize on those assets. I would think that they would need to go after the box manufacturers, and not the carriers, to enforce those patents, but IANAL.
What this means to F/OSS projects such as MythTV will have to be determined.
Re:NOT a Patent Troll (Score:2, Insightful)
Hindsight is 20/20. 99.99% of inventions are made with "off-the-shelf technology" and seem obvious 10 years after the fact. Like Edison's lightbulb. If the invention is blatantly obvious, as you claim, then the defendants should have no problem winning a summary judgment invalidating the claims.
Re:How is this a Patent Troll? (Score:3, Insightful)
+1.
Sorry, but when TiVo was founded, Moore's law was still only giving us changes in degree, not changes in kind. The simplest way to record a TV show was with VCR+ codes from the newspaper. The idea of continuously recording streaming video in real time from a consumer set-top box onto a hard drive - with a 30-minute buffer! - was in fact novel.
Slashdot needs a word for all these obvious-in-retrospect claims. Something like "post hoc prior thought", only pithier.
Re:NOT a Patent Troll (Score:2, Insightful)
You have a higher standard for non-obvious inventions than the courts do. And I still believe that you will find most "great inventions" simply took existing parts and pieced them together in a useful way. Edison didn't invent the first lightbulb -- his improvement was to use a high resistance carbon as the filament. He didn't invent high resistance carbon. So, he simply pieced together two existing things that happened to work well together.
On you last point: as I said, if it is a solid case of invalidity, then it will never go to jury and be decided by the judge in summary judgment. Even if it did go to jury, whether juries statistically favor plaintiffs is studied quite closely and depends on jurisdiction. So I don't agree with your generalization of bias towards the plaintiff.
Re:How is this a Patent Troll? (Score:1, Insightful)
The notion of being "non-trivial" is a part of the classic patent definition.
I think you meant "non-obvious". Being non-trivial doesn't enter the equation at all. In fact, trivially simple inventions which make life easier, in their own little way, have profited greatly from the patent system--and the monopoly that is made possible because of it.
Sure... The "idea" of "time warping" a multimedia feed has been around since the first time a guy missed a critical sports play and wanted to see it again, instantly. Of course, he didn't know fuck all about how to make it happen. The idea was obvious, the practical implementation was not. Let's be clear here, Tivo didn't patent an idea, they patented an implementation.
If "any grad student" could have invented it at the time, they would have... Wouldn't they? There would have been significant prior art, and every university would have protested the patent office. That's the way this is supposed to work. The first one off the line gets the payoff.
Patents are intended to encourage the disclosure of useful information that
otherwise would not have seen the light of day. It was not intended for some
sort of virtual land grab feeding frenzy.
The purpose of a patent system, as congress defined it, in In Article I, section 8, of the U.S. Constitution: "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;" The Patent Act and subsequent laws further refined those ideas, and gave inventors (and authors i.e. copyright) a monopoly of limited duration, in exchange for disclosing ALL of the useful information relevant to the function of the invention.
It was intended to increase useful R&D, to allow generations of new inventors to further improve upon old ideas, but chiefly, to propel the economy. Which it did greatly, when you compare inventions to other regions. Make no mistake, parallel inventing has been going on as long as the patent system has been around. Any significant technology invented often had multiple people working on the problem congruently, usually in disparate locals.
I'm no Tivo fanboi (but you're clearly sour grapes), and don't even own a DVR. I don't see them being a patent troll. They're suing the media outlets, which probably use their patented inventions, and simultaneously blockade them from entering a very large market. Patent trolls, on the other hand, by definition very seldom ever attempt to make a useful product, no less take it to market. If you have a counterexample, let's hear it.
The patent system needs an overhaul, no disagreement, and maybe under better circumstances their patents wouldn't have made it through, with so many VERY CLEARLY bad patents.
Re:TiVo was cool... (Score:3, Insightful)
> I see. On your PC that you bought from Best Buy 11 years ago, you were able to have your shows recorded to a digital medium from any arbitrary analog source?
1) yes
Like the other guy, I had an analog TV frame grabber card at that time.
> You could both watch a show and record something else, simultaneously?
2)
You mean could my Unix computer MULTITASK?
Could my Unix computer do multiple disk operations concurrently?
Could my Unix computer read from one file on disk while writing to another?
A VAX built before you were born could do this.
> You had software that utilized a control scheme that realized you were human and it took you some
> time from the time you saw what you wanted to watch to when you pressed the button and adjusted accordingly?
So acknowledging that humans aren't computers is somehow patent worthy?
Adding a tweak in QA is not an invention.
> You had software that kept up with the shows you were watching, scheduling recordings based on a priority list, adjusted recording
> times when schedule changes occurred and warned you about conflicts when you recorded new shows?
You are describing basic database and procedural programming.
You basically want to give Tivo Corp a patent over simple SQL syntax and middle school BASIC programming.
> And you managed to do all of this for ~$450 (with no future expenditure required)?
Now this is just assinine. Tivos cost $1000 when they were released. Although the cost
of the unit is not really the point. The point is whether or not the invention represents
something NEW and NON-TRIVIAL. CHEAP simply isn't a part of the equation.
Do you want to stifle progress for the next 17 years over this "invention".
Also the "not future expenditure required" bit is also total nonsense since a Tivo requires
a continuing recurring fee to remain functional and many of us found the need to upgrade our own
Tivos since the stock models tended to come with a meagre amount of storage space.
> Calling all of that innovation trivial is remarkably disingenuous.
You are trying to conflate the vernacular with the relevant legal definitions here.
Writing some simple database logic to spit out a recording schedule and sort out
priorities is an undergraduate level class project. The idea to apply this to TV
is interesting but ultimately should only grant the "inventor" the advantage of
being the first mover.
They shouldn't get a state enforced monopoly over it.
Everyone else that can replicate their work should not be prevented from doing so.