TiVo sues AT&T, Verizon over DVR patents

This was originally posted at ZDNet's Between the Lines.

TiVo said Wednesday that it is suing AT&T and Verizon over three DVR patents. The complaints seek damages and a permanent injunction.

Simply put, TiVo is pursuing the same legal playbook it followed against Dish/EchoStar. The patents in question include 6,233,389, 7,529,465 and 7,493,015.

TiVo recently won another legal victory against EchoStar, which was found in contempt of court in its legal spat. TiVo won $103 million in damages, but the case will have another hearing in November or so. EchoStar appeals continue. Meanwhile, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is reviewing TiVo's patents at Echostar's request.

In a statement, TiVo CEO Tom Rogers said:

We will continue to pursue enforcement where necessary to stop infringement of our intellectual property.

On a conference call, Rogers noted that TiVo was still going to generate value through partnerships and distribution deals, but wanted investors to recognized the company's intellectual property portfolio.

The lawsuits against AT&T and Verizon come as TiVo reported a fiscal second quarter net loss of $2.9 million, or 3 cents a share, compared with a profit of 3 cents a share a year ago. The company reported revenue of $57.3 million, down from $65.2 million a year ago. Wall Street was expecting a loss of 5 cents a share.

Rogers called the quarter "solid" since the company delivered adjusted EBITDA of $5.2 million. TiVo said it has been focused on distribution via the likes of RCN and Best Buy. The company also said DVR rollouts with Comcast and DirecTV are on track.

Updated August 27: to correct amount of quarterly net loss.

[opiapr]

Are you sure thats a $2.9 BILLION lose. I believe TiVo will be bankrupt with such a lose.

[jaguar717]

2.9 million *loss* (not lose), and yes they *would* (not will) be bankrupt.

Surprising how small a company they are.

[BtmnHatesRbn]

I'm just curious, but what they're suing for I was doing on my old Compudyne 4SX with a PBTV card installed. I have tons of ZIP disks and SuperDisks full of TV shows in the old AVI format of the 1990s, in the terrible resolution thereof. How is that different than TiVo? What about the tons and tons of Japanese devices (FamiCom Titler, anyone?) that also did the same thing over there before TiVo even existed. I hope AT&T and Vodaphone (the owners of Verizon) keep this case in court for so long that TiVo goes kaput from the legal fees. In the mean time, I'm off to eBay to get a Panasonic DVD-R/DVD-RAM DVR with a 210 GB internal hard drive!

[rbrown653]

Vodafone does not own Verizon

They own a huge part of Verizon Wireless but wireless only

[viper396]

While you may chose to split hairs over the similarities, there is a difference between a stand-alone DVR specifically designed to sit in a family room versus a general purpose computer capturing video via a TV-capture card.

The FamiCom Titler? All that did was overlay titles and play Famicon/NES games. It had no recording or capture capabilities. How is that even remotely similiar to a TiVO or other DVR? You said, "tons and tons of Japanese devices .... that also did the same thing", yet your one example was completely wrong.

Prior to DVR's like Tivo, your old Betamax or VHS VCR is probable the only widely available device that actually had the most similiarities.

[subslug]

If AT&T had any sense they would just ditch that crap DVR of theirs and switch over to the Tivo and simply play the game. They're already playing the Microsoft game with their current DVRs, how could Tivo be any worse besides, the Tivo DVR is 10 times better than what AT&T and Dish Networks for that matter I've never used the Verizon DVR although I'd be amazed if it was better than a Tivo.

[mscritsm]

Yup, you got that right. You don't see TiVo suing DirecTV, since they're currently working on a new generation DVR with the TiVo interface. No doubt DirecTV gets the right to use TiVo's patents in it's current non-TiVo DVRs as part of the deal.

[ikramerica--2008]

At some point TiVo's patent will be challenged at a higher level, and the whole "revised" patent system that allowed them to patent a concept that wasn't novel will be revamped.

No matter how many times companies try to "work around" the TiVo patent, TiVo just claims that any use of time shifting in any manner is their property. Thus, they claim that the IDEA of time shifting, not the implementation, is something they own, and frankly, this is just not right. VCRs had allowed for time shifting for many years before TiVo, just in a different form (turn TV/VCR button to TV, watch other channel while VCR records program, watch second program later). And there were digital recording devices before TiVo, including D-VHS. There were also dual tuner VCRs, allowing one device to do this. So TiVo didn't actually invent the idea in that respect. Nor did they invent hard disk capture of content (happening YEARS before TiVo via MJPEG cards).

At some point TiVo will be exposed, and they will go out of business. ATT is as sneaky as Charlie Ergen, so we'll see where this goes, if they want to fight, or just roll over like Murdoch and a few cable company weenies did.

[umbrae]

Not to mention PCs and Video Capture cards have been doing functionality exactly like TiVo well before the company existed. As the very least, ATI has proof of prior art.

In the end, my Dish DVR works fine and has not changed (or branded as TiVo), so not sure what the lawsuit got them.

[shinkukage09]

Urg...what the hell... This is why our patent system is so ****** up. Being allowed to patent and copyright an idea? An idea that was in use way before something even existed? Come on, someone get rid of the patent system already, it's a mess as it is.