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Comcast Loses Patent Battle Against TiVO

Comcast has lost a major legal patent feud against Tivo, resulting in the company being unable to import or sell the company's X1 cable box. The International Trade Commission has defended Rovi Corp's claim that Comcast violated patents on several technologies that let customers schedule set-top DVR recordings remotely via a mobile device. Rovi Corp acquired Tivo and adopted the Tivo brand ahead of its battle with Comcast, and saw a massive uptick in stock value on the news of the victory last week.

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Comcast, for its part, says it will simply remove the impacted features from its existing X1 offerings.

"We respectfully disagree with the ITC’s decision in this matter," Comcast said in a statement. "In fact, Rovi has never disputed that Comcast or its predecessors independently developed our X1 platform and our cloud- and app-based technology. While we believe the ITC reached the wrong decision, we will remove this feature from those offered to our subscribers while we pursue an appeal."

Comcast last year had already replaced TiVo with Gracenote as the supplier of metadata services for the X1 set top, a move insiders say was directly courtesy of the patent battle.

"Rovi is pleased the International Trade Commission issued its final ruling in our favor and found that two Rovi patents are valid and infringed by Comcast’s X1 products, and issued an exclusion order that bans Comcast from importing and selling X1 devices that infringe our valuable intellectual property," Rovi/Tivo said in its own statement. "Today’s Commission Opinion reinforces the need for Comcast to take the necessary licenses to our IP."

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thehammer86
join:2015-10-18

3 recommendations

thehammer86

Member

Rogers is F**k'd!

Rogers (Canada) just took a 525 million dollar write off last year when they cancelled development of their own IPTV platform in favour of licensing Comcast's X1.

Yikes...