Patent Archives - Page 5 of 9

The TiVo v. EchoStar Update

TiVo and EchoStar head into the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit this Thursday to continue arguing their ongoing patent dispute. The docket is pretty tight, so the hearing should be a brief affair. An unexpected benefit in attending the pre-DigitalLife event last week was spotting Kunal Madhukar’s badge (and the person attached). … Read more

Lycos Loses ‘Home Court’ Advantage

It looks like TiVo, Netflix and Blockbuster will be packing their bags for Massachusetts, after they won the first of many legal scrimmages in their patent defense against Lycos. Lycos has asserted that all three companies have violated patents they own, on âinformation filtering technology.â? The two patents that are at the heart of the case are related to the recommendation services that the companies provide.

After Lycos filed their lawsuit against the trio, ChoiceStream (the company that created Blockbusterâs suggestion service) filed a separate lawsuit, to have the patents thrown out.

In their lawsuit against Lycos, they argue that the patents are invalid because of obviousness and prior art. Because Choicestream filed their own lawsuit in the Massachusettsâ court system, TiVo, Netflix and Blockbuster sought to have their case transferred there as well. Iâm not familiar enough with the legal subtleties to know why Lycos originally opposed the motion, but with Lycosâ headquarters in MA, the judge found the request reasonable enough and granted the motion.

TiVo v EchoStar, Part XVII – He Said, She Said

Speaking publicly on the recent Patent Office decisions… Both TiVo and EchoStar appear to hope for the best while appeasing (or is that calming?) their stock holders via the press. TiVo: “The patent office affirmed the majority of the claims of the patent including two that the jury found that EchoStar infringed,” he said. “The … Read more

TiVo v EchoStar, Part XVI – Revisited

One TiVo stockholder’s take… The USPTO action finalizes the first phase of the Patent Office reconsideration of TiVo’s patent. The enforceable part of a patent is a series of “claims” (basically descriptions of part of a thing or process). Some of the claims of TiVo’s patent were validated, some were rejected. The claims that were … Read more

TiVo v EchoStar, Part XVI

Those of you with a vested interest (stock), probably caught news earlier this week that the US Patent and Trademark Office has completed the reexamination of a TiVo patent at play in the EchoStar case. Several claims were confirmed (software) and several were rejected (hardware). What does this all mean? Hard to say at this point, especially with oral arguments on hold until October. One thing you can bank on: This case is far from over (within both the courts and the Patent Office) unless a settlement is reached. Another thing you can bank on: Skittish investors dumping TiVo stock.

TiVo Awarded Patent For Password That Is So Hard To Guess It Will Outlive Your Hard Drive

TiVo’s dust up with Dish may get all of the ink love, but in reality, it represents a very small part of their patent portfolio. Between their trademark filings, their patent applications and their aggressive open market acquisitions, TiVo has managed to build a very impressive intellectual property portfolio around their technology. They haven’t always had the cash to defend this moat, but with damages from TiVo’s potential patent award against Dish, now up to $130 million it could free up a lot of cash to go after other infringers, if Dish loses their appeal.

Some of TiVo’s patents have obvious applications and some of them are really held more for defensive purposes, but it’s the bizarre ones that I find most interesting and on Tuesday, TiVo was issued a patent for a method of locking down hard drives, that involves creating a password, that is so hard to guess, it would take longer than the expected life of your hard drive for someone to crack. According to the patent document, the method is described as the following.

An authentication system for securing information within a disk drive to be read and written to only by a specific host computer such that it is difficult or impossible to access the drive by any system other than a designated host is disclosed. While the invention is similar in intent to a password scheme, it significantly more secure. The invention thus provides a secure environment for important information stored within a disk drive. The information can only be accessed by a host if the host can respond to random challenges asked by the disk drive. The host’s responses are generated using a cryptography chip processing a specific algorithm. This technique allows the disk drive and the host to communicate using a coded security system where attempts to break the code and choose the correct password take longer to learn than the useful life of the disk drive itself.

At first the whole thing seems pretty silly to me, but when I think about it, I see two ways that TiVo could take this technology.

My Vonage Line Is Safe For Now (Bummer)

To recap… Verizon went after Vonage, claiming patent infringement. The jury agreed that Vonage infringed on three of Verizon’s patents, ordering $56 million in repayment plus future royalties. The court seemed to move towards a total injunction, but yesterday GigaOm reported on Verizon’s propsal: Judge Claude Hilton has issued an injunction that bars Vonage from … Read more

TiVo v EchoStar: A Response in Georgia

One TiVo stockholder’s take… EchoStar responded to Judge Duffey’s order to show cause with a lengthy set of documents outlining their reasons for believing the various documents in question are immune from discovery. Generally they take the position that the documents are simply internal work product that was never communicated to EchoStar. Without access to … Read more