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 BitPremium
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1 edit | The glory of gaming our horribly flawed patent system This is what happens when a company is granted a patent for obvious prior art. Now the company that didn't actually invent anything gets to extort millions from others.
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|   Morac
join:2001-08-30
Riverside, NJ
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 ·Comcast
1 edit | Re: The glory of gaming our horribly flawed patent system I'm pretty sure TiVo invented a set top box to record TV to a hard drive and one with very low end hardware on it to boot.
Other than ReplayTV (which came out a month after TiVo), what other set top DVRs existed prior to TiVo's patent being filed?
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| | BitPremium
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4 edits | Re: The glory of gaming our horribly flawed patent system I thought Replay came out a month or so before TiVo or maybe a month after. TiVo certainly wasn't the first to record to hard drive. The latter is obvious given they use the MPEG2 codec which existed long before TiVo.
The first DVR design was by David Rafner who worked for Honeywell back in the 1985. He described TV recording, time shifting and commercial skipping. Patent 4,972,396 detailed simultaneous recording and playback of video over 10 years before TiVo.
TiVo also claims patents on their GUI when their entire GUI is prior art of Gemstar (now TV Guide). And while TiVo now offers a TV Guide branded GUI, they didn't always.
TiVo didn't invent anything. Their getting a patent is just evidence of our flawed patent system, the same patent system that granted IBM a patent on the scroll bar in 1995, when everyone here knows that scroll bars already existed in every major OS by that time.
The question isn't whether they were the first to successfully market it. My beef is they should not have been granted a patent on any of it as they didn't invent it and it was all prior art, some of it patented prior art. Unfortunately the only fix is to have the same flawed patent office that screwed up in the first place, admit they screwed up and undo it.
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| | |  GooberPremium
join:2000-12-17
Naperville, IL
kudos:4 | Re: The glory of gaming our horribly flawed patent system If it were that simple, the Tivo patents would have been overturned by now--either through litigation or via reexam. | |
| | | | BitPremium
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2 edits | Re: The glory of gaming our horribly flawed patent system They try to do it through litigation which triggers the re-examination, however it is the same PTO that screwed up in the first place doing the re-exam and they're doing yet another re-exam right now. What is needed is a totally separate independent body doing the re-exam, a body completely independent of the PTO AND one that is tech savvy.
Come on, dispair.com registered the ":(" smiley, IBM in 1995 got a scroll bar patent, TiVo getting their patent is just one of a great many screw ups.
The PTO re-exam system we have now is like an appeal of a judge's decision going back to the same judge instead of a appellate court.
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| | | | | GooberPremium
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Naperville, IL
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1 edit | Re: The glory of gaming our horribly flawed patent system Litigation doesn't necessarily trigger a reexam. In reality in most cases some party or other will request one, yes.
Regardless, in either one of those scenarios, prior art is submitted. If it's truly valid prior art, then it will get taken into account. Look at the 1-click patent and the crustless sandwich patent.
And, the reexam system is not quite like the regular examination system. The process goes through additional examiners who are more experienced and who must sign off on the final decision. It may not be perfect, but it's better than the regular examination process.
A few years ago I was prosecuting an automotive case dealing with an Engine Control module and the examiner just couldn't get his head around how the thing worked. In the end, he just took my word for it, allowed the case, and mentioned to me in passing that he would let itigation determine whether the claims were enforcable. I think the Examiner's in the CRU are better. | |
| | | | | | BitPremium
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1 edit | Re: The glory of gaming our horribly flawed patent system While I certain give TiVo kudos for having the first commercially successful DVR, I am just frustration that they, who didn't invent anything inside their boxes are now trying to extort money from other companies.
And between this and things like IBM getting a mid 90's patent on the scroll bar or Dispair dot being able to Register ":(" as a trademark this TiVo disaster is just one of many examples of our failed patent system. While I'm not a fan of the EFF they do have some examples of completely bogus patents and those patent trolls do the same thing TiVo is doing, gaming the patent system to extort money
Some funny and frustrating examples of this »w2.eff.org/patent/
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| | | | | | | GooberPremium
join:2000-12-17
Naperville, IL
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1 edit | Re: The glory of gaming our horribly flawed patent system I think Tivo and NPEs are vastly different (even though I don't like the Tivo patents). Acacia is a long-time recognized troll certainly.
But, if you manufacture the item that you patented and it's the lifeblood of your company, I don't see a problem with defending it as hard as you can. You have the duty to shareholders to do so. | |
| | | | | | | | BitPremium
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2 edits | Re: The glory of gaming our horribly flawed patent system I see what you are saying but I don't see a effectual difference since their scheme and outcomes are the same, to extort money they didn't earn based on products/patents they didn't invent.
To me, TiVo is no better than Acacia.
You see patents out there on hyperlinks, pop up windows, frames, it is totally insane.
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| | | | | | | | | GooberPremium
join:2000-12-17
Naperville, IL
kudos:4 | Re: The glory of gaming our horribly flawed patent system Industry generally perceives them as different, including our company. Our approach to NPEs is of a different nature than our approach to manufacturers. | |
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| | | | | | Morac
join:2001-08-30
Riverside, NJ
kudos:1 Reviews:
·Comcast
| Have you ever read the patent in question? It's very easy to state that TiVo is guilty of patent fraud when you have never read the actual patent itself.
TiVo invented a number of things when they made their original DVR and while TiVo does hold a "generic DVR" patent, that's not the one they are currently using against Dish.
The one they are using against Dish is the "Barton Media switch" patent which describes a very specific way of performing DVR functionality which was filed in 1998. Specifically the audio and video are stored separately and time tagged using a special "Media Switch" chip. This allows them to be reconstructed with very little CPU usage.
The original TiVo's CPU only ran at 54 Mhz. Without TiVo's patented method, performing real time DVR functionality with a 54 Mhz processor would not be possible.
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| | | | | | | | BitPremium
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4 edits | Re: The glory of gaming our horribly flawed patent system Yes, I read the patents in question and you can see from the immense list of referenced patents that TiVo didn't actually invent anything that comprised their "groundbreaking" time warp system. A lot of their many steps in this process are generic to all AV processing in computers and had been long before TiVo. Timestamping component AV and demixing were nothing new either. They may have refined the process and tweaked it, but it is nothing revolutionarily worthy if its own patent...what they are doing is obvious at best. Putting this technology in a stand alone consumer product was, but the technology itself wasn't.
TiVo getting this patent would be like Apple getting a patent on the desktop PC GUI.
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