Microsoft Sues TiVo 112
doperative notes that "TiVo [is accused] of infringing four patents. Microsoft is asking that TiVo be barred from importing the digital-video recorders, which are primarily made in Mexico and sold in the U.S... The four patents in the ITC case relate to program schedules and selection, controlling the interface, and a way to restrict use of the DVR based on the program’s rating."
The Complaint and Patents (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The Complaint and Patents (Score:5, Informative)
You can find confirmation from Microsoft's mouth here [winrumors.com].
And in the winrumors link you supplied, it says that MS took this route ".. days after Tivo brought a lawsuit against close Microsoft partner, AT&T". Surprise!
Re:The Complaint and Patents (Score:4, Interesting)
tivo cares nothing for it's users, and the sooner they go out of business the better.
once upon a time they had a great product, and they made it terrible by forcing annoying advertisements in all their menus, as soon as you pause anything, over live tv when a product is featured, and they don't provide digital over the air programming info for non-cable subscribers. 100% of customer contact goes through a call center which is powerless to perform all but the most basic tasks.
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once upon a time they had a great product, and they made it terrible by forcing annoying advertisements in all their menus, as soon as you pause anything, over live tv when a product is featured, and they don't provide digital over the air programming info for non-cable subscribers. 100% of customer contact goes through a call center which is powerless to perform all but the most basic tasks.
that's odd. I've never seen an advertisement whenever pausing live TV, or when pausing recorded shows. Yes, there's a 'more about $foo_show' item that pops up, but I clicked on it exactly once years ago and never noticed it again.
I'm unsure about the OTA programming thing, but since the device is basically geared to be a 'cable box replacement'. It has a niche and it's a good one.
All the times I've called the TiVO call center (it was in Canada, I believe) the techs were quick, gave good answers to my questi
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I definitely don't *like* the ads when you pause something. (BTW, it is a minor TEXT ad, and it is NOT what is selected.. you must explicitly MOVE UP and select it.)
However, you're ABSOLUTELY WRONG about "they don't provide digital over the air programming info for non-cable subscribers". You can use a Tivo with plain OTA. That works 100%. No cable whatsoever. (You *might* be talking about "clear QAM" channels. Those are NOT 'over the air' stations, they're on your cable, so you must obviously be a cab
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And in the winrumors link you supplied, it says that MS took this route ".. days after Tivo brought a lawsuit against close Microsoft partner, AT&T". Surprise!
How is that a surprise? The reason AT&T are being sued by Tivo is because of microsoft's software, given the way these sort of patent suits usually play out i'd say this is the exact opposite of a surprise, this is exactly what you would expect to happen. Tivo sues AT&T over a patent issue with MS' software platform, so MS counters that Tivo infringes on patents in the same kind of software and the end result will be the most unsurprising one, a cross-licensing agreement.
Re:The Complaint and Patents (Score:5, Informative)
TFS leaves out one critical point in TFA. This complaint is in reaction to TiVo suing AT&T (and Microsoft since the software in question was written by Microsoft (MediaRoom)).
This isn't as simple as "big bad Microsoft is suing poor little TiVo". According to TFA, this is just another volley in a protracted lawsuit.
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It leaves out a couple of points, anoher important one is that they're in discussion for a cross-licensing agrement.
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yes, and they're taking the ITC loophole, which is only used whenever someone is going for damage (but not to actually prove anything in court)
Microsoft Owns the Law (Score:2)
Re:Microsoft Owns the Law (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody can complain of or sue Microsoft effectively. Microsoft can use the law to bust someone's balls for something.
What about Eolas (don't want to link to a patent troll), which sued Microsoft for auto-activated controls in a web browser and won half a billion dollars? Or i4i which sued them for being able to edit custom XML tags in Office 2007 and won $290 million? Oh, and Sun sued them over Java and won, although that resulted in Java not being installed by default on the dominant platform which I always thought was a terrible outcome for Sun.
I am sure that there are plenty of other examples, but those are the ones that jumped to mind. Most lawsuits end in private settlements so we never know the final figure.
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Eolas was a patent troll. in that case I very much wanted MSFT to win simply to kill off a patent troll.
What is needed is a method of killing patent trolls from being able to sue. Like you have to have a shipping product in 3-5 years from the date the patent was granted or else the patent is invalid.
Re:Microsoft Owns the Law (Score:4, Interesting)
No, MS winning against Eolas wouldn't have helped anything or changed the situation. If someone has to be a patent troll, I'm happy to see them go after Microsoft and other big monopolists and take away some of their cash. I haven't seen Eolas suing anyone else, such as Opera or Mozilla, so I don't feel to badly about them.
What I would have liked to see in that situation was MS do something useful with their power, and pressure government to fix the patent laws so that they silliness with software patents is stopped. But they didn't do that; they'd rather pay $500M so they can keep using their software patents as offensive weapons against smaller competitors.
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What is needed is a method of killing patent trolls from being able to sue. Like you have to have a shipping product in 3-5 years from the date the patent was granted or else the patent is invalid.
Certainly for a trivial little idea like the one that Eolas came up with, then I whole heartedly agree. But I am not so sure when it comes to a field like medicine that is exceedingly complicated and yet incredibly expensive to develop to a final product. For example, a company or university might come up with a method of getting a chemical to a part of the body to which it is difficult or dangerous to administer medicine in a conventional way. It might be a revolutionary technique that may one day lead to
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Software isn't real though. Once you make it once you can duplicate it an infinite amount of times. drugs, physical objects all deserve patents.
Software, methods, etc shouldn't be patentable to begin with. someone has a patent on manually collating files by laying them on a table and walking around that table taking one sheet each time.
Is that really a patent worthy item? is there a difference between that and eolas's patent on plugins? Not really. software is already abstract and is always built on p
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Nobody
Nobody except an orginisation specifically specialising in suing. By specialising in suing and not making (or even licening the making of) anything you make it extremely difficult to countersue.
Data compatibility "reasonable efforts" law? (Score:2)
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Do you know what is ON the scales of justice now? Piles of cash.
That's why we are so screwed. The honest little man (or corporation) can't be heard over the piles of cash being dropped from the ceiling.
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They are suing Tivo [reuters.com] in Seattle as well.
From the article:
SEATTLE, Jan 24 (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) sued digital video recorder company TiVo Inc (TIVO.O) on Monday...
The claims of patent infringement, made in federal court in Seattle...
emphasis mine...
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I'm pretty sure Dish and DirecTV have settled with Tivo over this and are currently paying
licensing fees to use these patents. It took a while but in the end they settled. I remember
because while I was a Dish subscriber my DVR settings kept subtly changing and Dish's blanket
reason for it was that they were working with Tivo to provide functionality that didn't
infringe. Sorry for no link, I'm sure googling for Tivo & Dish Network will provide plenty of
details.
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Some of these patents are so lame they are beyond belief. A menu system is unique? The general feeling of a Tivo, I had one for about 8 years, reminds me of DOS apps. You know, using the arrow keys to move around. Is bringing the concept of paper menus to a computer really innovative? Instead of a cursor you use your eyes to navigate a menu and you make your selection verbally. It is obvious that a pointer and a selection button would be needed to take over the role of eyes and verbal commands. How else wou
Re:The Complaint and Patents (Score:4, Interesting)
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In order to buy or fight a patent, you needs TONS of cash. End of sto
Time to End software Patents (Score:4, Interesting)
When will this charade be put to an end. And since when did Microsoft own the rights to the function of the 'V' chip?
Oh ya, when the patent was granted. Go figure.
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This should be tossed out by the judge before it even begins...
Tivo has been selling boxes since 1999 and has been very public about it.. They are not some Overnight Success that just came out of nowhere.. If they have been infringing this lawsuit should have poped up years ago..
If Tivo added new features that are Infringing then they should be order to roll back or roll out non infringing Firmware.
If they are new granted Patents.. Tivo either has prior art or Tivo never researched enough..
If the Software P
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I have ATT Uverse, and MS did a lousy job in implementing their system compared to my old
Satellite TV from the early 80s predates all. (Score:3)
How was Microsoft awarded any or all of them from mid to late 90s when they were already being done through Satellite TV boxes in the early 80s, maybe even late 70s?
TiVo could have made this impossible (Score:2)
ITC complaints don't work against products made in the USA. Outsourcing puts your business at risk of being shut down without even losing a real court case.
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The patents are 5,585,838 [uspto.gov], 5,731,844 [uspto.gov], 6,028,604 [uspto.gov], and 5,758,258 [uspto.gov].
Urg...
Ok, so 5,585,838, "Program time guide" should be revoked, the patent officer that reviewed it fired and the lawyer who submitted it fined. Seriously, this patent is, in essence "TV Guide via software menus". Novel is not a word that can be used to describe that, period.
5,731,844, "Television scheduling system for displaying a grid representing scheduled layout and selecting a programming parameter for display or recording," is a patent on the TiVo, pure and simple. It was granted about a year before t
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Your logic seems good to me, but I cannot see how it being television, or any other networked media is any different from virtually any software system. Selecting spellcheck is not much different from selecting record. Having a menu handle something new is not innovation.
Now, if MS can find a patent for an innovative system design that is only used for scheduling TV on a computer, then TIVO should worry. For example, a video filesystem or encoder, I could accept a patent for, if and only if that algorithm w
Usual bullshit... (Score:1, Informative)
From the Redmond monopoly. Microsoft can't compete on the merits of their products so they use bully tactics. How typical.
Re:Usual bullshit... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Microsoft can compete on merits but they stopped selling it the year after release? Could the one be the disproof of the other perhaps?
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Microsoft can compete on merits but they stopped selling it the year after release? Could the one be the disproof of the other perhaps?
Perhaps, but not necessarily. The product could be better than any competitor's, but the marketing department decided to pull the plug for whatever reason. Recent history is full of examples of superior technology being defeated by superior marketing.
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Yeah well I had a ReplayTV which was founded 2 years before TiVo.
ReplayTV's interface was way better than TiVo's
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...ReplayTV which was founded 2 years before TiVo.
Wikipedia says ReplayTV was founded in 1997, the device was announced in January 1999 at CES and began selling in April.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReplayTV
Tivo was founded in 1997, began early trials to actual users in 1998, was also at CES in 1999 and began selling in March.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TiVo
Luckily your opinion of the interface does not require facts.
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Re:Usual bullshit... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, no clue from someone who has watched MS since the late '80s, when they were still producing Xenix, had hijacked IBM's DOS and called it their own, the DR DOS debacle, the bad treatment of WordPerfect, Novell, et alia, the payoffs to SCO, and now they're suing to help out their customer, AT&T in defense of a lawsuit in which MS has no firsthand involvement. Why did MS stop selling that TV? Could it be that they weren't seeing the customer demand for their own products that other companies like TiVO were? My disdainful comment stands, gents, sorry.
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DOS v1 had 301 confirmed bugs in IBM's bugs database so IBM wrote DOS 1.1 from scratch, all versions since are built on that version
According to the Wikipedia entry on IBM PC-DOS [wikipedia.org], DOS 1.1 was written by Tim Paterson (the original author of 86-DOS) after he started work at Microsoft. A quick scan of Google seemed to back up the idea that Microsoft wrote DOS 1.1 for IBM [fortunecity.com].
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Yes, no clue from someone who has watched MS since the late '80s, when they were still producing Xenix, had hijacked IBM's DOS and called it their own, the DR DOS debacle, the bad treatment of WordPerfect, Novell, et alia, the payoffs to SCO, and now they're suing to help out their customer, AT&T in defense of a lawsuit in which MS has no firsthand involvement.
Although I agree with your comment and would add "stacker/doublespace", the "hijacked IBM's DOS and called it their own" was incorrect. MS bought
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Not to mention that IBM was concerned about monopoly prosecution at that time.
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Nope. It's Tivo that's the patent bully here. Although it's hard to imagine how Microsoft has any leverage on Tivo here. Microsoft is the late entrant here.
Although with BS like being able to patent the enforcement of MPAA ratings, it's hard to tell what might happen.
"select title from recordings where rating = :v_PG13 ;"
Real "inventive" there...
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Look up Microsoft UltimateTV. They had something on the market at around the same time Tivo came out. That doesnt make them the "late entrant"/
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Yeah. "look it up".
That's not exactly the most compelling demonstration that Microsoft was in the market in any meaningful way.
One device tied to a single vendor that was released after the Tivo and quickly was discontinued.
This is the kind of "inventor" that should not be able to hold the rest of the industry hostage. Tivo pulling this nonsense is bad enough.
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Patents aren't invalidated if your product isn't the most popular on the market.
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Poor TiVo (Score:3, Insightful)
Always getting sued by someone.
I wonder how Microsoft can claim the patent when Tivo was first with the DVR capability. Also: Why did microsoft wait almost 15 years to bring this complaint? Why the delay Borgified Bill.
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They're probably working on a product themselves, and decided that rather than working to develop it, they'd rather force TiVo's bottom to drop out and pick them up for a nickel or 3.
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Has Tivo gotten worse? I had one of the original ones and I loved it. Since then I've had DVR's from Comcast (mediocre), Time Warner (the worst by far), Dish (mediocre), AT&T Uverse (ok), and now DirecTV (ok). It's been 10 years since I had a Tivo so I may only be remembering the good parts, but it seemed better than anything else since, which is pathetic.
All of them are painfully underpowered. Scrolling through the guide is always waaaay too slow. What really sucks is that the cable companies usually o
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I don't know why people bag on Tivo. Of the canned products like this, it's by far the best. Once you have the Tivo desktop program as well, and integrate Netflix and Amazon into it, it's stupidly powerful as a cheap media server for any idiot to use. The thing to remember about their GUIs is they're not designed for us--the crowd reading this comment. It's designed for my grandmother. And what else do I need, as a nerd? I don't need 24th century LCARs. I need to turn on the TV, hit transfer for the soccer
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Which is why, more and more, I seriously consider dropping my TV service completely and doing everything through my xbmc. Once Netflix is stable in there, I probably will.
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I seriously consider dropping my TV service completely and doing everything through my xbmc.
Sure, Netflix can replace scripted drama and comedy channels such as USA. But is there a viable alternative to cable or satellite TV service for live news analysis and opinion (e.g. MSNBC) or live sports (e.g. ESPN, Speed)?
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I don't watch sports, and I get my opinion from NPR (and the NPR plugin in XBMC works great). I could be in the minority here.
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All of them are painfully underpowered. Scrolling through the guide is always waaaay too slow. .
I don't know about the others and I haven't seen a recent Comcast DVR, but one reason they were extremely painful and slow is that the DVR made a round trip request to a Comcast server on every button push.
I have had multiple TiVo's from a series 1 through my current HD Dual Tuner with cable cards. The interface needs an update, but is still pretty good. Maybe the Web version is snazzier, but I haven't forked over the dollars to upgrade.
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I wonder how Microsoft can claim the patent when Tivo was first with the DVR capability.
Because they filed for and, with the exception of one of the patents, received the patent years before TiVO was ever released?
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The patents aren't about DVR capability. Now you don't have to wonder anymore.
Borgified Bill has left the building (Score:1)
Perhaps a Borgified Balmer?
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They didn't "wait" for anything; this is in response to Tivo suing ATT [cbsnews.com]
over software Microsoft provides to ATT for their U-Verse product. I dislike software
patents and am no fan of Microsoft but I can't say I have much sympathy for Tivo
with regards to this matter either.
Was that part of TCI Your Choice TV test in IL (Score:2)
Was that part of TCI Your Choice TV test on the mount prospect IL super head end back in 1993 / 1994?
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They're not claiming a patent on the DVR itself.
Also: Why did microsoft wait almost 15 years to bring this complaint?
rating? (Score:5, Insightful)
>restrict use of the DVR based on the program’s rating.
Isn't that what the rating was put there FOR? my god, how did they get a patent on that?!!?
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Funny... (Score:4, Interesting)
Funny how three of the patents were granted just at the time the Tivo must have been in final development.
Re:Funny... (Score:4, Informative)
Why's that funny? I don't see the connection. What would be more interesting is when the patents were FILED in relationship to the TiVo development.
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Its funny because vanishingly few Slashdot readers have any idea how patents work or how to read and understand them.
He didn't realize he's the one that is funny.
Han Shot First (Score:2)
Reading this post [winrumors.com] and TFA, the chronology seems to be that Tivo sued first. If this is the case, then Microsoft is doing exactly what they should be doing, bitch-smacking Tivo on behalf of its customer, AT&T. This is how companies expect their vendors to cover their asses. Pay attention Google.
Strategy shift? (Score:1)
Is it only me or is Microsoft being a lot more agressive in litigation by suing a lot more and sponsoring people who sue competition. Not sure if it is a strategy shift since Bill Gates left or they just decided to attack competition in a more open way. Before, they would just change the protocols (like samba) so it was not backward compatible
maybe I am seeing something when there isn't... who knows?
Made in Mexico?? (Score:1)
As a fellow Mexican /. reader, I am interested in any reference to the assertion that TiVos are made in Mexico.
Does anyone has an article saying that?
The Real Motive here ... (Score:1)
... is to give Apple some more reason to hesitate before entering the DVR market (by leveraging the AppleTV and possibly acquiring TiVo out-right). At this point, Apple's dominance in mobile computing and its ability to further extend its domination into Television programming puts a squeeze on Microsoft's ability to hold its ground.
If I were wrong, Microsoft is simply wasting their time (or just being plain mean) filing a lawsuit against a company that has a single niche product and little, if any, risk e
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Another example why Mono is a ticking time bomb (Score:1)
First Sony, etc (Score:2)
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