So TiVo sued Verizon. Then Motorola sued TiVo in apparent retaliation (much like Microsoft sued TiVo after TiVo sued AT&T). Now TiVo is filing a counter suit against Motorola (as they did against Microsoft), and to top it off they’ve included Motorola customer Time Warner Cable in the new suit. There’s some high stakes legal poker going on here.

Tongue out of cheek, the timing is primarily due to the stay on the Motorola suit, which was in place while the AT&T & Microsoft cases proceeded as they involved the same patents, being lifted. As long as the case was stayed TiVo was under no pressure to file a counter suit, but not things are moving forward. TiVo announced the suit in a simple SEC filing:

On March 26, 2012, the Company filed an answer and amended counterclaims in response to a patent infringement suit that Motorola initiated against the Company in the Eastern District of Texas in 2011 that was stayed until earlier this year. In its response, the Company alleged counterclaims against Motorola and Time Warner Cable, one of Motorola’s customers, for infringing U.S. Patent Nos. 6,233,389, 7,529,465, and 6,792,195 owned by TiVo.

The full court filing has been posted on Scribd (thanks to Sam Biller):
TiVo files answers and amended counterclaims against Motorola & Time Warner Cable

The patents involved are the same core patents behind the EchoStar/DISH Network and AT&T settlements, as well as the ongoing case against FiOS. TiVo’s been successful so far, 2 for 2, so that’s a good sign. Time Warner Cable is the only remaining top five MVPD in the US that TiVo doesn’t have a business agreement or a legal settlement from. TiVo has business agreements with the top two, Comcast and DirecTV, and fifth place Cox Communications. Third place DISH Network settled with TiVo. That leaves TWC in fourth place, and many investors have wondered when TiVo would take some form of action against TWC if they didn’t come to an agreement.

These legal fights tend to drag on for years, so I’m not going to hold my breath waiting on any outcome just yet.

They were very cagey in their responses, largely due to the legal issues of the pending merger and the limitations on what the two companies can do together until the merger is complete. But it certainly sounds like they’re looking at Android, probably in a form similar to Google TV, as Motorola’s new STB platform. This is exactly what I talked about in August when the merger was first announced. The buyout, or merger if you prefer, is about more than phones and patents. It seems like most of the press surrounding the merger continues to focus on just phones and patents, but Google is playing a much bigger game. Motorola only has 4% of the global smartphone market, but they’re the dominant player in the US cable STB market. Google also has SageTV, which was asked about int he videos but they declined to talk about it, and we still don’t know how it will be used. But it seems logical that it will play a role in the future of the Google TV platform and/or a related STB OS.

There are a lot questions and the answers could have a major impact on the industry. Android runs primarily on ARM core chips. Google TV launched on Intel chips, but it is moving to ARM. Cable STBs tend to use embedded chips using MIPS cores. Could Motorola STBs shift to ARM for Android? That would be a huge change for traditional STB chip vendors, and a huge opportunity for ARM vendors. A chip like a Tegra 2 or Tegra 3 would make for quite a powerful STB. Consider that today’s high end smartphones have far more processing power, graphics power, and protocol support than pretty much any cable STB on the market. And MVPDs are increasingly looking to OTT features to enhance their services and attract and retain customers.

But I’m extrapolating a bit, certainly reading into some of the things that were said, or not said, in the videos. There are a lot of interesting points in the videos. The first is primarily about the cable business and the second discusses tablets and if MSOs might start offering tablets as a part of their service, just like leasing an STB.

Here are the videos, see what you think: