Injunction Against EchoStar Blocked 109
bestinshow writes "ExtremeTech has the news that a judge has blocked the injunction against Echostar Communications selling its PVRs." From the article: "The ruling was the latest in an ongoing battle between TiVo, one of earliest companies to design personal video recorders, now called digital video recorders or DVRS. 'As a result of the stay EchoStar can continue to sell, and provide to consumers, all of its digital video recorder models,' EchoStar added. 'We continue to believe the Texas decision was wrong, and should be reversed on appeal. We also continue to work on modifications to our new DVRs, and to our DVRs in the field, intended to avoid future alleged infringement.'"
question for those who understood this stuff.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:question for those who understood this stuff.. (Score:5, Informative)
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The quick turn around on this will probably help keep the legal fight and what it means to co
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And if (I don't know if this applies here, just conjecturing) the patents apply to that code as well, and it can't be distributed anymore?
If someone has a legitimate patent, and the invention was non-obvious when the patent application was made, then the only source you can depend on is the inventor's, if they choose to be sole distributor.
This is good. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:This is good. (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a philosophically painful case for me because I want to root for TiVo because they have a superior product, but not for patents. And I want to root for Echostar because I have one of their DVRs and would hate to lose it's functionality. I also don't want to root for TiVo because a win for them will negatively impact Dish customers who through no fault of their own are being punished for Echostar's behavior. That's like Microsoft users being forced to remove the Quicktime player from all Windows installations because of some industrial espionage they did against Apple (just by way of example -- it didn't really happen).
Re:This is good. (Score:4, Insightful)
Tivo enjoyed great profits from their launch, but what they want now is a lock on the market for what was essentially a small up-front investment.
Tivo's current systems are generally superior to most of the competition. Their problem is that they are EXPENSIVE. The cable companies realized that DVRs sell service, so like cell phones they give them away in exchange for monthly contracts. Tivo is selling $400 cell phones in a market where most people expect them to be free (even if a bit more junky). This is why Tivo is losing market share fast.
While I'd love to see Tivo win, the fact is that their original product wasn't that innovative. Others were working on the same sorts of things, but Tivo executed better. That should earn them some bucks, but not royalties for 17 years. Plus, Tivo's up-front expenses were not that high - probably not more than a few 10's of millions of dollars - they were almost certainly fully recovered with a healthy profit.
Patents should exist where they are needed to allow companies to make healthy profits on risky ideas. However, that is all they are needed for - if a company is able to make a healthy profit without a patent, then one is not necessary. Patent lifetimes should probably be tweaked by industry as well - in industries where we expect a high level of expense to ensure quality (such as pharmaceuticals) we should probably grant longer patents (or lower the safety standards to reduce up-front costs). In an industry like toothbrush designs they should probably be shorter. Software patents should probably only last a year or two - as softare is not capital-intensive and a two year head start is plenty to make a profit.
In general patents should exist for the benefit of society - to encourage companies to come up with innovative products. That benefits everyone. However, if a company is willing to do R&D with the promise of a 200% payback we shouldn't be offering them 20,000%.
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Unfortunately, protection from competition breeds expenses, encourages waste and creates inefficient uncompetetive organizations.
"in industries where we expect a high level of expense to ensure quality (such as pharmaceuticals)"
Pharmaceuticals are a perfect example; they waste 80% of their income outside research. They spend more than twice as much on marketing and administration as they do on R&D. The
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Patents are needed to give people the incentive to innovate to begin with. Let's say that you come up with some novel, highly efficient form of the internal combustion engine. You put millions into research, mortgaged your house, everything. Without a patent, or equivalent legal means of protetion, some auto manufacturer could by 1 engine, tear it down, and due to the economi
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You could still sell the rights to your patent to a third party. One possible customer would be another auto manufacturer who wants exclusive ownership of the technology and is willing/able to take on the legal costs to defend it. Another possible customer is a group of lawyers who specialize in these things. No, neither may be a
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Second, you're confusing the problems with the legal system (the cost of bringing suit against a large company) with the principle behind a patent.
Third, calling checkmate incorrectly means that you lose.
In your world there is no reason to innovate at all, since a patent works against you and a large company will just steal your idea. So why do anything?
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Excuse me, but you don't have to be rich to legitimately have an idea first. Some inventors become rich off their ideas, sure, but they didn't have a great idea because they were rich.
Show me the part of patent law that says "to be awarded a patent you have to make more then $x a year" or "you must have m
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But you do have to be rich to succesfully defend your patent against any corporation that would challenge it in court. You need to hire a lawyer and keep on paying him as long as the case lasts, and since the corporation can drag the court case so it lasts for years - just look at the SCO vs. IBM, which, while not a patent
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Well, duh. And most of those compounds are probably also not patent protected (you didn't cite a time-range, but only a few dozen patented drugs hit the market each year). If Rite Aid wants to sell their own brand of aspirin they
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Another piece of evidence is pediatric extensions. A recent law (well, that is in the last 20 years) allowed pharam companies to extend their drug patents if they did testing on pediatric formulations of their drugs. As a result almost all major drugs are tested for pediatric use. Before the law this
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The only thing that 'status quo' shows is that patents do not devastate the medical research completely. Really convincing evidence should show a clear increase before and after patents. I'm not necessarily talking about an increase in absolute numbers mind you.
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Considering that patents have been around in most lucrative markets long before drugs were developed, such evidence would be very difficult to obtain. How would you perform such an experiment short of abolishing patents? Just looking at single-coun
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Thank you for the debate.
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Much of your arguments are covered by and answered by the report. Basically it disagrees with you.
I thought you just got done telling me that the report did not cover evidence showing (or not showing) a clear increase before and after patents. Where is this covered in the report? I'd have assumed that if you already had this info you wouldn't have ask
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I asked you to provide some sort of empirical evidence that strongly suggests that patents are beneficial. I think I did anyway, you shouldn't have answered to that malformed post as half of it disappeared.
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Nope. Particularly in the almost inevit
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"Then offer them a 200% payback. Outright. Instead of a patent creating a monopoly, let it be worth a 200% ROI for the patent holder if it gets used in products to a certain amount within the next five (or ten, or thirty) years. Paid by the patent office,"
I'm not sure this is a good way to encourage thrift. "Hey guys, whatever you spend, you'll make double. Now go out there and invent somethin! Save your receipts!"
Seriously, though, the red tape and government bungling that this would encourage would
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"Waste" is presumptive, although certainly they spend a lot more than they do on research.
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You essentially described how the phone company used to work. You know why the telephone company invented the transistor? Simple - their pro
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If it weren't for patents it wouldn't even be a business - at least not the R&D side.
Now, if society just wants to say that drugs aren't all that big a deal - who needs them - then maybe getting rid of patents makes sense. However, if that were really the position of society then there is another easy solution - leave the current system alone but don't buy the dr
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No confilct there. (Score:3, Insightful)
Monopolies rarely in the long run, or hect short run, produce products that are inferior or of lesser value.
Or put it in the other way, without the patent, other companies or inventors.. can produce prducts that are better. That's the nature of competition.
When did it become obvious? (Score:2)
Obvious when? To whom? Why?
That is what patents protect. Before it is obvious. Someone has to not only come up with the idea but act on it. That last part is harder than anything.
I agree that some patents are inherently silly, being applied for well after prior-art existed. Yet if the disk based DVR and such was so obvious why wasn't it out and established before tivo?
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Obvious when? To whom?
To a skilled practitioner of the relevant art, at the time of the invention.
The law already defines that. It's just that it's quite hard to prove obviousness, except in the case of prior art.
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If it was so obvious, as you claim, then the question you replied to stands: why didn't it exist before? Surely, if it was that obvious (and therefore, would be obviously a good moneymaker and obviously something people would pay for) then DVRs would have existed prior to TiVo.
You are falling into the trap of "oh, that's as obvious as the wheel." And yet, if the wheel is so obvious to us now, why didn't ancient civilization X invent
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Surely, if it was that obvious (and therefore, would be obviously a good moneymaker and obviously something people would pay for) then DVRs would have existed prior to TiVo.
Patentability depends on the obviousness of the invention, not the obviousness of the marketability of the invention.
Note, BTW, that I wasn't claiming the TiVo was obvious, just answering the question about how obviousness is decided.
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And since the TiVo patents have been upheld as valid previously, it seems that the invention was indeed unobvious at the time of invention.
I know that this is Slashdot and all but not every patent is junk, and therefore unworthy of existence.
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And since the TiVo patents have been upheld as valid previously
Have they? I'll take your word for it.
it seems that the invention was indeed unobvious at the time of invention.
That hardly follows, either in a legal sense or in the more general sense of whether or not the patents are actually beneficial to society.
I know that this is Slashdot and all but not every patent is junk, and therefore unworthy of existence.
Agreed. However, I'd say that on a percentage basis rather few patents are not ju
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Simple...the necessary HD space just didn't exist at the time (well, economically anyway). First gen Tivos hit the street in what, 1997 or so? HDs then, 4GB to maybe 8GB if you were lucky, were just barely spacious and speedy enough to do what a DVR needs to do. The market appeared because the core technology (hard disks) had matured enough, not because of the idea of recording/viewing directly from HD had b
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This same chick also thought the solution to the economy was to print more money, so there ya go, but I think it shows that this can indeed seem obvious.
It may not seem obvious when you are
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Finally, some real wisdom here. There is nothing inheritently unique about watching one show while recording another, no more than any multitude of various VHS manufacturers allowing you to hit record and the TV/VCR button simultaneously after the Betamax sets, albeit recording in different formats.
* The real thrust of TiVo's case (which is apropos for all of us silicon wafer heads who ever signed an NDA) is the fact that Echostar hired a TiVo engineer some time back to develop a similar PVR before TiV
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Oh, really? Then why is it that thousands of people who have used both TiVo and other products (like me; I've used TiVo, ReplayTV, and a generic) think that nobody can touch TiVo's usability? I'd say that there is quite a lot of opinion that TiVo really knows how to make something usable, and nobody else has managed anything more than a kludge.
There are also a lot of people out there who switch thinking the compe
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Tivos are a great product and I agree that Echostar deserves what they get if they "played dirty pool". I have not done enough research to know if Tivo's patent is too broad.
This Tivo patent may seem obvious and broad by today's standards but that may not have been the case when they applied for the patent. Patents exist so inventors can try to benefit before the vultures swoop in and capitalize in on someone else's work.
Tivo needs to get their act to
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I think this is EXACTLY what patents were made for.
The cable and satellite companies control the flow of content. TiVO had no say about that. They have an invention that makes the content more va
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The Wright patent was about the wing-warping control system on aircraft. Part of the result of that litigation was that an alternate method (ailerons, elevators) was developed, which is now by far the most common method.
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TiVo vs Echostar- Echostar is infringing on patents owned by TiVo that allow for the recording of one program while watching another program (aka, anything one can normally do with a VCR) on a DVR.
Echostar vs TiVo- Tivo is infringing on patents owned by Echostar that allow for the pausing, rewinding, and re-forwarding) of live TV on a DVR.
Personally I'd be more afraid for TiVo when the other lawsuit comes to a head. Echostar's violation isn'
WTH? (Score:3, Insightful)
allow for the recording of one program while watching another program (aka, anything one can normally do with a VCR) on a DVR.
Look at a VCR. It holds one video cassette.
Look at a DVR. It holds one hard drive (usually).
Try recording to a VCR while watching another program on the same tape (or on a different tape). It's physically impossible. Recording to and watching from the same
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I find it funny that you choose to argue an analogy (semantics in this case) instead of any other point.
And basically you're trying to tell me that TiVo pa
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If you're saying what I think you're saying here, ie: that a dish dvr can't record one show and watch another one that it has already recorded at the same
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One point about Dish's superiority (Score:2)
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i just noticed the original ruling was in *TEXAS* --- it wasn't in that one particular patent-whore friendly federal court was it? if it was, that definately explains the early tivo win, but now that the case is on appeals (and outside of that court), maybe things will be different (read: right).
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The idea of a DVR may be obvious now. But was it obvious then? TiVo was the first to market a DVR and they invented the market. The rest are just trying to profit off the idea (and producing inferior product while at it, something which ruins TiVo's reputation).
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Credit to Tivo for getting there first (commercially), no doubt, and I still think they have the best dvr out
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"Just search Google" is not a valid citation; and, since the TiVo patents have been held to be valid upon a prior examination, it would seem that existing "prior art" was not accepted as valid prior art, so it would seem that no, the invention was not obvious at the time.
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By your logic, what you've just said is that if the patent office said it was so, then it must be. You are far too trusting.
Did you know that the average patent is researched for about 25 to 30 hours? http://www.ftc.gov/os/comments/intelpropertycommen ts/bartonjohnh.htm [ftc.gov] That's less than it takes to write the patent
Stayed Tuned For More Judge-on-Judge Action! (Score:5, Insightful)
Consumers win, consumers lose... all of this is irrelevant, the truth is that we have a sh*tty patent system that's vague enough to have two judges give 2 different verdicts on the same case.
In all cases I believe that it is wrong to make EchoStar stop its service immediately, and to remotely disable the current consumers. Consumers that have already paid shouldn't be the ones to bear the consequences. But then again, the consumers' interest is the least of the worries of those concerned...
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So in other words, no different from any other aspect of our legal system, in which judges are about as likely to legislate from the bench as they are likely to judicate according to the law.
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Re:Merely a common appeal + review (Score:2)
Two judges didn't give "2 different verdicts on the same case." A federal district court in Texas granted an injunction and Echostar appealed for immediate relief to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit -- the court which oversees all patent appeals. The Federal Court temporarily block the injunction granted b
You win some, you lose some, you win...err.... (Score:1)
The word is inane (Score:1)
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This is automatic (Score:2)
Worst. Article. Evar (Score:2)
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And everyone worried about losing their DVR service listen: If EchoStar loses they will most certainly choose to liscence from Tivo instead of fucking their customers. However much money they have to pay Tivo is nothing compared to losing customers because they had t
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Wow, you really do not know much about things do you. This is pretty standard practice. The judge agrees to take the case - they will typically stay any injunction until they have time to look over the case for any mistakes or issues they need to rule on that may have effected the outcome. This really is very common and has nothing to do with "buying" off someone.
I suggest that you take
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Please tell those of us who have neither tivo or dishnetwork what kind(s) of difference(s) there are. I've considered both companies in the past, but can't see paying someone else a subscription fee for the crap that's available.
MythTV (Score:2, Informative)
Also, you OWN the recordings once you've made them.
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You don't need to; nearly all modern PCs have the ability to switch themselves on at pre-scheduled times. Just set up MythTV to schedule a wake-up (using nvram-wakeup [sourceforge.net] or similar) and automatically power off the PC when it's idle. (It's slightly arcane to set up, but it works; I only gave up on it because my current PC is very loud when it first powers on, and I have to sleep in the same room as it.)
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Nothing's free, but electricity for a computer is darn near it.
Power consumption of equipment [macalester.edu]
OTC-H3100D00 P4 2.4GHz, 256MB usage: 41 watts.
Electricity price: 8.4 cents/kwh
41 * 24 * 365 = 359,160 wh = 359 kwh
359 * 0.084 = $30.16 yearly, or $2.51 monthly.
Considering most people have a $60 monthly cable bill, I think it's fair to say that another $2.51 is inconsequential. Especially considering you might be able to trim $5 worth
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Scheduled wakeups probably make it more efficient.
Own? really? (Score:2)
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Overly broad patents (Score:1)
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A VCR can only record the channel being fed into it, and has to position the tape in a particular position to write the data, so no.
The TiVo can read from one sector of the disk to play back a program and then x milliseconds later, write to another sector to write part of the program being fed into the tuner. Physically not possible for a VCR, but quite possible for a computer. (Technically speaking,
The judge sold out! (Score:1)
This is very much akin to the old netscape scenario, Netscape (Tivo) built this new thing called a web browser. Some folks at Microsoft (Echostar) took a look at it and said, "If we build that and add it to
Oh yeah? (Score:2)
Dear mr. judge - has anybody yet told you today to go play with yourself?
</opinion>
Already Seeing Problems Here (Score:2)
I have a Dish Network DVR, and as of yesterday one of the features I like has quit working. This is the onscreen display of minutes remaining you can receive when you press the Select button during playback. I found that information useful, and miss it. It pisses me off that they can so easily remove functionality after I've agreed to take and use the unit as offered a