EchoStar sues TiVo, Humax over patents

Posted on Thursday, May 5, 2005 by MegaZone

EchoStar communications has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against digital video recorder company TiVo and electronics maker Humax. The suit, filed on April 29 in U.S. district court in Texas, alleges that TiVo and Humax infringe on four EchoStar patents related to DVR technology.

Well, I’m completely not shocked by this. Standard practice when defending against a patent lawsuit – you dig through your own patents and try to find some you can accuse the other party of violating. TiVo and ReplayTV did this years ago – they ended up settling with a mutual licensing agreement.

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  • stile99

    Ok, maybe this specific article is a little low on information, and it is covered better in other articles. However, based on just this one:

    Isn’t it interesting that TiVo has a specific statement, and ES’s response seems to boil down to “Oh yeah? Well…same to you! (We’ll figure out what ones you’ve infringed on later if we have to)”?

  • buran

    Patents rarely defend innovation anymore. These days, they’re used to crush your competition, or sometimes to prevent beneficial uses of technology (for example, researchers often have to beg some company for permission before they can use drugs in research, or research something, even when the research could be used to cure ailments and help the sick. It’s pathetic.

    My boss is working on getting a patent, actually, on a machine he’s developing… but he isn’t the litigious type. (I hope I’m right!). He wants to use the patent for what patents were meant to be used for.

    The system does need an overhaul, though. While my boss’ idea is non-obvious, we think, there’s a lot of stuff out there that’s patented but is still obvious. That’s the competition-crushing kind.

    I think that if you want to do well, you should genuinely make something that people want instead of bludgeoning everyone else.