wierdo
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| reply to KrK
Re: Tivo blows
said by KrK  :said by TKJunkMail :I agree. Not all patents are bogus. This one is. Obviousness is supposed to be a consideration. And TIVO was well behind ReplayTV. If they were "well behind" replay, then how on earth did they make it to market several months ahead of Replay?
BTW, many of TiVo's patents were "stupid," hence their being lost on patent office re-examination. The "time warp" patent wasn't obvious, or they would have lost it, too.
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It's wierdo, not weirdo. Yes, I know that's not the 'proper' spelling of the similar english language word.  |
KrK
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| said by wierdo :If they were "well behind" replay, then how on earth did they make it to market several months ahead of Replay? Well, they must of used that Patented Time-Warp feature to leap ahead, ReplayTV came out in January 1999, and Tivo's first unit was April, so in a non-time warped universe, ReplayTV was first.
Once the DVR was out, and time-shifting, pausing, jumping forward to real time, etc were all out the so-called "time warp" feature becomes an obvious extension of the technology.
Echostar's first DVR's were built on Microsoft software and didn't actually get released until a few months after TIVO, however Echostar had been showing off the hardware while waiting on the software for months.
The simple fact is these DVR's were developed at the same time. Nobody stole or copied someone else's code, but TIVO was granted a patent on a feature that was common to them all, and now is going sue-happy.
It's a common problem.
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"Regulatory capitalism is when companies invest in lawyers, lobbyists, and politicians, instead of plant, people, and customer service." - former FCC Chairman William Kennard (A real FCC Chairman, unlike the current Corporate Spokesperson in the job!) |
