Microsoft Sues TiVo To Help AT&T 168
Julie188 writes "Microsoft is suing TiVo, claiming patent infringement. Microsoft is doing this because TiVo has sued AT&T — and AT&T happens to be Microsoft's largest customer of Microsoft's Mediaroom IPTV technology. Microsoft says that TiVo has copied Microsoft's Mediaroom IPTV technology in its DVRs. If Microsoft wins, it would effectively block TiVo from selling DVRs without a licensing deal with Microsoft."
Sure have been a lot of patent suits lately (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Sure have been a lot of patent suits lately (Score:5, Insightful)
What makes you think any of these companies want reform?
They love this game of Mutually Assured Destruction.
They end up cross licensing patents and it creates barries for upstarts.
More importantly, they have the money and the lobbyists to keep the game rigged in their favor.
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In Re Bilski [wikipedia.org]?
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"More importantly, they have the money and the lobbyists to keep the game rigged in their favor."
This wouldn't be a problem if we were allowed to execute any lobbyist on sight.
Patent infringement is a nuclear weapon (Score:5, Interesting)
You gotta love how companies have found exactly what to do with patent infringements - put them in a bag and keep them stored away well under room temperature until the right moment when these can be enjoyed - such as, at a time when they can be used to scare or threaten competitors or help achieve a goal. Patent infringement is not patent infringement until such time when it can be exploited to the limit.
Humans are so damn smart it is scary.
Re:Patent infringement is a nuclear weapon (Score:5, Interesting)
Devils Advocate.
Hard to know if something infringes on your patent if you don't know the implementation.
Tivo's lawsuit against AT&T gave Microsoft the groundwork necessary to compare how Tivo's system works in comparison to Microsoft's system. /Devils Advocate
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Humans are so damn smart it is scary.
If humans were so smart, you wouldn't have to explain the golden rule to them.
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Not true. In a capitalist society the golden rule is: If it makes money and isn't illegal, do it.
If we're so proud about winning the cold war, how come we keep complaining about the precise thing that we were fighting for?
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1. If it makes money and it's legal, do it.
2.If it makes money and it's illegal, change the law.
Let's see what the Grand Nagus will say!
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1: If it makes money and it's legal, do it.
2: If it makes money and it's illegal but makes more money then it would cost to be legal, do it.
3: If it makes money and it's illegal but would cost too much to do, change the law.
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In context of this lawsuit, I'd also like to nominate the following as relevant: 203 New customers are like razor-toothed gree-worms. They can be succulent, but sometimes they bite back. And while we're talking about Microsoft and Ferengi, I'd also mention one unrelated to this suit, but related to MS and FLOSS: 76 Every once
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FTFY. :)
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Not true. In a capitalist society the golden rule is: If it makes money and isn't illegal, do it.
False. While lack of money often brings sadness, money can't buy happiness. The best you can do is rent it on an extremely short term.
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hookers and blow covers this nicely
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"He who has the gold makes the rules"?
What golden rule? (Score:2)
If humans were so smart, you wouldn't have to explain the golden rule to them.
Do onto others as you would like to have them do ~1.618 times to you?
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Except... that sleeping on your rights for that purpose gives them an affirmative defense against you: laches [wikipedia.org]
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Wow, but honestly Microsoft didn't do anything like this to keep UltimateTV alive.
It's a bitter irony that TiVo keeps winning suits like this to eventually be targetted by one of the richest software makers in the world.
Which is it? (Score:3, Insightful)
Is this an example of "the enemy of my friend is my enemy" or the beginning of "mutual assured destruction"?
Re:Which is it? (Score:4, Insightful)
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We could probably do without Tivo, in the long run. I mean, they may be competent, but they're competent bastards. Remember Tivoization?
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Fuck you, I support Tivo's legitimate use of GPL v2 code.
I note that you don't support it enough to log in before you tell me 'fuck you'. The very definition of cowardice.
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The beginning of mutally assued destruction. AT&T licensed the technology it is being sued over from Microsoft, so Microsoft would directly suffer if AT&T lost. As far as I'm aware, this is the first time Microsoft has actually sued anyone for patent infringement and it is doing so for defensive reasons.
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I like the MAD option. Someone push the button. I want to see the entire house of cards come tumbling down. And, let's pray that when the patents house of cards falls, it somehow undermines the copyrights house of cards too!!
Suing TiVo for delivering content ? (Score:5, Funny)
Next is Neanderthal suing them for using fire or a wheel ?
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It's Tivo that's suing willy nilly.
The latest legal salvo comes a few months after TiVo launched its own strike against AT&T and Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ), alleging that their video services illegally use its TV "time-warping" technology in their digital video recorders. AT&T's U-Verse TV service runs on Microsoft's Internet video technology.
AT&T declined to comment on Microsoft's legal actions.
TiVo hasn't been shy about using the courtroom to protect its intellectual property. The company also has a long-running dispute with Dish Networks Corp. ( DISH) and sister company Echostar Corp. (SATS) over the same DVR technology. The company has agreements with most of the cable companies and DirecTV Group Inc. ( DTV).
Tivo (Score:5, Interesting)
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That's very interesting. When we got U-Verse (Nov 2008) I would have agreed with you. I decided to stick it out and within 3 months AT&T rolled out an update that improved the situation quite a bit. In fact they have provided quite a few improvements over the last year and most of the issues I originally had are long gone. The only issue I haven't tested since the updates is HDMI connections causing the box to randomly reboot. Both my HD sets only do up to 1080i anyway so Component is fine with me. I ne
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Since this is all Microsofts stuff, a patent case again
Re:Tivo (Score:5, Informative)
HOWEVER, this stock buy was in 1999, and the deal was with the old AT&T, not the current AT&T who used to be SBC before they bought the name. The old AT&T from which Microsoft bought $5 billion worth of stock is essentially now a chunk of Comcast, who bought AT&T's cable TV division. The $400 million dollar deal between Microsoft and AT&T for the Uverse infrastructure is wholly unrelated to the earlier deal.
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Wouldn't this make a fantastic courtroom defense? I can just see it:
"Your Honour, We submit that Tivo lacks the defining characteristics of the allegedly infringed software. Our does not suck. We tried to make it suck as much as Microsoft's, but without access to their proprietary process for suckage, were unable to make our software suck in the same way as theirs. If the court will allow, I'll spend the next 6 days demonstrating just how much their so
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CASE FUCKING DISMISSED. Microsoft is held in contempt of the world, and must perform oral sex on everyone. twice.
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CASE FUCKING DISMISSED. Microsoft is held in contempt of the world, and must perform oral sex on everyone. twice.
So the punishment for sucking is... more sucking?
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Damn straight. Let them do what they are natively good at for once. For free.
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ATT's menu system/user interface sucks compared to DirecTV. It's slow, complicated, and clumsy.,
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Pausing and rewinding live tv still isn't supported, but scheduling and deleting recordings on satellite boxes has been available to us for several months now.
The biggest issue I have with the system is that it produces severe macroblocking every so often when I watch HD while recording HD. Other than that very serious defect, I've been really pleased with our experience.
Re:Tivo (Score:4, Informative)
Tivo hit the market in 1999.
Circular reasoning (Score:3, Funny)
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So, what happens if there is a set of law suits with a circular dependency and ALL plaintiffs win? Does that mean we lose?
The only winners in this case will be the lawyers....
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Yeah, I can't stop laughing either...
patents are the nukes of the software industry (Score:2)
When one big software company sues another, the only possible outcomes are that either they all back down or they end in Mutually Assured Destruction. Most of the companies have patent portfolios as a deterrent only. I don't know what TiVo thinks they can accomplish with their North Korea strategy.
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Explicit use of patents as a deterrent (Score:2)
Most of the companies have patent portfolios as a deterrent only.
Such companies could at least be more up front about it. For example, a company holding a patent could license the patent for all uses, provided that the licensee does not sue the company for patent infringement.
Hoist on their own petard... (Score:5, Interesting)
Live by the patent, die by the patent...
The same nonsense that allowed Tivo to run amok is now being turned back against it.
None of these shenanigans should be tolerated by anyone at all.
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Re:Hoist on their own petard... (Score:5, Insightful)
Except Tivo wasn't a patent troll - they actually produced a best-of-class product that the courts agreed was being infringed on. I know patent litigation is unpopular (and for good reason), but Tivo appeared to be a case where it was Working As Intended.
We'll see with Microsoft, although the timing is certainly suspect.
Re:Hoist on their own petard... (Score:4, Insightful)
But their patents are about as great as amazon one-click. Nothing they did was new or novel enough that it should have been patentable.
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Most patents look obvious after the fact, but someone has to be the first to invest their time and money to get there. I bet someone may have considered storing video to hard drive, but that's just one part of the puzzle. The whole pausing and rewinding live TV thing is pretty non-obvious by itself.
The whole point of a patent is to encourage companies to innovate. Without the patent system no one would have invested money in the proto-Tivo people so they c
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The same nonsense that allowed Tivo to run amok
Yeah. I mean, everyone and their brother was making PVR's before TiVo, and it's not like this invaded every single cable company in America or anything, or did anything at all to change how we watch TV as a nation...
Sorry, but TiVo's a great case of "well-earned Patent." You've just got your panties in a knot over the GPL v3 issue.
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For what?
Making a VCR with a computer?
What single thing did they actually come up with?
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Why yes. They did make a VCR with a computer, that also recorded and played back the recording while it was being recorded. And allowed relatively instant access to anywhwere within the video recording. And allowed one to pause live TV, and schedule the recordings intelligently with little hassle, and organize and display those recordings in an easy to use way.
Oh I see now, its WAY FUCKING BETTER THAN A VCR.
I have 3 HD Tivos, all lifetime subscription. They are the best entertainment dollar I have ever
Re:Hoist on their own petard... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, you paid them lots of money so you have to run to their defense, I get it. However, nothing changes the fact that they are a VCR on a computer. Once you have a non-linear medium, the features you mention are obvious. They didn't "invent" anything a 5 year old didn't already think up 20 years ago, they were just the first to use it commercially, so they get copyrights on ideas (when you shouldn't be able to copyright ideas, just specific implementations of them) that are simple, obvious, and often not even new (other than the "on a computer" part).
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For what? Making a VCR with a computer? What single thing did they actually come up with?
Why don't you read the fucking patent [google.com] instead of just pretending they "patented recording TV with a computer" and getting all uppity "cos dat's bullshit"? Their patent is for their method of event and data buffering that allowed them to record TV on a ridiculously cheap 54mHz system. This is why there were (and are) still non-TiVo DVRs.
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This "well earned patent" basically boils down to the following:
cat /dev/video0 > tivo-patented-computer-concurrency.mpg &
mplayer n00bs-fanboys-will-buy-into-anything.mpg
Once the consumer hardware was in place, anyone that wanted to could
start cobbling together recorders with spare parts and shell scripts.
Some people even started with the old cards that didn't do any sort
of compression. This was tricky since a large hard drive in those
days was
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What exactly did tivo invent? Recording tv I did with a vcr, playback while recording is a simple as playing an mpeg2 into a file and then playing the file back while still writing to it. That last one is just a function of how real OSes handle files.
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...yes, with dedicated encoder hardware.
You could buy such a PC board yourself if you wanted to for about $400.
You can get a lot of mileage out of specialized hardware. The ION is a pretty great demonstration of that.
If anything, anything that Tivo could possibly legitimately patent should be obsolete by now.
It should have been made moot by the first PC NTSC->MPEG2 card.
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For the same reason is wasn't laughed out of the patent office in the first place ... the patent office are a bunch of assholes who rubber stamp any patent that ends in the words "... using a computer".
I mean seriously, prior art ?
A DVR is nothing more than a "VCR using a computer" ... you see how that magic phrase works now ?
Even in computer terms, the TiVo is not the first playback device that had a seek bar to rewind / forward-wind content to the desired position. This should never have made it out of th
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Please people, if you're just opposed to the whole concept of patents then just say so instead of trying to single out every company in a patent lawsuit as being unworthy and merely derivative of stuff the cavemen did.
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So now we know (Score:2)
So, now we know how IP War I(tm) opens on Front #1 (Patents).
There will at sometime be a situation vital to two implacably opposed large opponents, who draw other companies in to the fray for their own interests. They will use Patents to attack. Kind of like all the treaties before WW I drew into two groups, except this will probably be a star configuration, (with the additional bonus of some companies possibly suing others on *both* sides).
I wonder how Front #2 (Copyright) and Front #3 (Trademark) will f
The copyright war: Harrison and Bolton (Score:2)
I have no idea how a copyright war would start.
The copyright war has already started in the United States: Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music and Three Boys Music v. Michael Bolton. A songwriter accidentally writes a song that matches a song that was played a decade ago, and the publisher of the older song successfully sues for seven-figure damages. How should one play it safe while writing a song in such an environment?
Collusion? (Score:2)
Wouldn't this sort of 'buddy system' be illegal, much like price fixing?
Yeah, I've noticed (Score:3, Funny)
My U-verse DVR is so much more usable than a Tivo because of all it's stupendous theft-worthy features.
As a former ATT U-Verse customer (Score:3, Interesting)
The U-Verse DVR *sucked*. If you pressed the "skip ahead" key at just the wrong interval, it would inexplicably jump to the end of the program with the "do you want to delete this?" prompt. To which I would invariably yell at the DVR "no you dumbass, I just wanted to skip ahead two minutes". The software, frankly was awful in a multitude of ways. I switched to DirecTV, and the DVR software is better, but still stinks compared to TiVo.
For me as big of a fan as I am of Linux, etc it wasn't about the OS. It was about the user experience. The U-Verse DVR did stupid, unexplainable shit often enough that I cancelled it after a little less than a year.
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Thank jeebus that Cox in Baton Rouge seems to be cable card friendly... I have 3 TIVOs in teh house and am in TV heaven. I rarley watch, but when I do I can watch WHAT I WANT.
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I switched to DirecTV
If you switch your TV to satellite, where do you switch your Internet access? Cable companies like Comcast have a habit of charging Internet subscribers who don't also get cable TV a "line fee" that's coincidentally the same price as locals-only cable TV.
Conspiracy theory (Score:2)
Let's see. Skip ahead 2 minutes. That sounds like... skipping a commercial block. Which TV companies say is a Bad Thing. Sounds to me like you were being penalized for trying to skip commercials.</conspiracy>
Just saying.
She's An Old Whore (Score:3, Insightful)
Reputation should not matter and each case should go to the courts on its own merits. However Microsoft is an old whore with a wicked, dirty, reputation. Judges and juries have got to go into a Microsoft trial with a bit of an urge to tie a hangman's knot and I don't blame them. Considering the several billions in losses that Microsoft has already received in various trials perhaps they should be shy of the court house and not think about dragging people to trial.
how / why did tivo avoid being acquired? (Score:2)
i wish someone could explain how tivo avoided being acquired. their user interface is one of the best i've seen, ever. the writing has been on the wall for them for 5 years. the fact that they still exist is a testament to how good of a device it is.
whoever is in charge of mergers / acquisitions at tivo really, really, dropped the ball. they should have been an acquisition target for every major cable company, AT&T, and every major dish company. it's essentially over for them. every TV providing entity
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> they couldn't figure out how to be successful.
That's because they put all their effort into patent suits instead of innovation and/or partnerships
Obvious and done before (Score:2)
I used to work for Kingston Interactive Television and we where one of the first in the world [advanced-television.com] to deliver a working IPTV, EPG & VOD system consumers as a commercial product. We did this in 1999, we won awards, including an EMMA and BAFTA nomination [bbc.co.uk]. Kingston had been researching streaming video over the local loop for at least 10 years prior to that, even testing a narrow-band television system. It was xDSL that made it possible. See KITV in action [youtube.com] on YouTube.
I designed the VOD & Content management
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I'm not so sure its that funny.
Isn't tivo just serving as a surrogate for Linux here? After all, I believe Linux is at Tivo's core.
Does this not continue the chain started when Microsoft sued TomTom? Is it not a pattern of harassment of companies making money with a Linux core?
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It looks to me like this is more threatening to MythTV and the like than to Linux itself. But then I didn't RTFA, so I wouldn't know.
Re:Hahaha, wow. (Score:4, Informative)
Nevermind [groklaw.net]
Re:Hahaha, wow. (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not so sure its that funny.
Isn't tivo just serving as a surrogate for Linux here? After all, I believe Linux is at Tivo's core.
Does this not continue the chain started when Microsoft sued TomTom? Is it not a pattern of harassment of companies making money with a Linux core?
In a word, yes. Jeremy Allison (of Samba fame) just gave a talk about this [lca2010.org.nz] not two hours ago at linux.conf.au in Wellington, NZ. He stated that this would likely be Microsoft's modus operandi against Linux and FOSS in the near future.
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Tivo is a Sue happy obnoxious company that agressively sues its competitors through patents that should never have been granted to it. It is nice to see someone pound them in their face for a change. Tivo is attacking Microsofts biggest platform partner, Tivo deserves to be slapped around.
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If you had a patent, wouldn't you try to enforce it?
You say it shouldn't have been granted, but it was.
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Have you ever invented anything in your life you wanted to earn money from? Its easy to hate the system from the outside looking in.
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Well, so says Stallman, but Torvalds sees nothing wrong with that.
Besides, this is a nuance probably lost on Microsoft.
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It's not like there are any [freebsd.org] other OSs that [netbsd.org] they could [wikipedia.org] have used. [sourceforge.net]
They used Linux because it was easy. Changing the GPL is just going to make companies like Tivo stop using FOSS, they'll just move to a project that has licensing that fits their needs better.
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Changing the GPL is just going to make companies like Tivo stop using FOSS, they'll just move to a project that has licensing that fits their needs better.
I think you're right and I think that's one of the greatest benefits. One of the main causes of failure in BSD style projects is breaches of solidarity with the rest of the project by programmers involved. Once someone goes and sets up a new proprietary use of a project, programmers have a "prisoners dilemma". If they go quickly to the proprietary company they get benefit and money. If they stick with their project, they know many of the others will go to the other project and their project will lose va
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Um, because at the time no one had done it before and put it out to market?
If you come up with something and go to market with it, I hope someone treats you as badly as these companies have treated TIVO.
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What you mean no one had made a computer video player by 1998 with things like pause and rewind?
Nonsense.
Like the other guy said: This "new" thing is just a couple of old things thrown together
in a manner that anyone skilled in the art could manage. This is why their work has been
replicated by students and hobbyists.
Patents are supposed to IMPROVE the state of the art by causing things to be DISCLOSED
that WOULD NOT OTHERWISE BE. If some students can recreate your invention than it hardly
should qualify for a
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Wow, and yet no one had done so and delivered it to market?
Tivo in 1999 was a miracle device, much like the VCR in its first generation.
My how memories are short.
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No. It's more like "how some people are totally clueless".
The moment I saw a Tivo, I realized that it could be replicated with a PC and an MPEG2 encoder card.
Patents aren't about enabling bridge trolls because they seem to be the first
to market something. Patents are about encouraging people to disclose useful
inventions that they would otherwise keep as trade secrets.
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the "time-warping" feature of DVRs? The "pause live tv" feature? How exactly is this novel and unique once you get the video into the computer that runs the DVR?
They didn't patent the features, they patented a particular method of implementing those features. If you'd actually read the patent, you'd see that the method is pretty freakin' complicated and definitely non-obvious.
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Typical foaming at the mouth anti-MS zealots, fail to read TFA and spreading FUD in knee jerk reactions.
It's Tivo that's the enemy of the new digital era.
It's Tivo that's suing willy nilly.
The latest legal salvo comes a few months after TiVo launched its own strike against AT&T and Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ), alleging that their video services illegally use its TV "time-warping" technology in their digital video recorders. AT&T's U-Verse TV service runs on Microsoft's Internet video technology.
TiVo hasn't been shy about using the courtroom to protect its intellectual property. The company also has a long-running dispute with Dish Networks Corp. ( DISH) and sister company Echostar Corp. (SATS) over the same DVR technology. The company has agreements with most of the cable companies and DirecTV Group Inc. ( DTV).
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Microosft does not and never has "innovated". They purchase the fruits of labor of innovators and slap their own names on it.