DVR throwdown: TiVo sues Dish, Dish sues right back
Though just about everyone these days can get their hands on a digital video recorder (DVR) of some sort nowadays, there are a few that still want to claim a piece of everyone’s pie, or so it seems. TiVo was arguably the first company to distribute DVR, and it sued Dish for copying its idea…but Dish doesn’t like that and is now suing TiVo back.
According to CNET News Blog, there’s dissent amongst the DVR kiddies. That isn’t verbatim, of course. Just a month ago, a court decided in favor of TiVo that Dish did violate TiVo’s software patent for its digital video recorder interface.
Dish is apparently displeased with the outcome, and has decided to retaliate. Dish just filed a suit against TiVo, asking the court to overturn the decision. Apparently Dish feels that it modified its software over two years ago when TiVo initially filed the violation suit. Not only that, Dish believes that all the complaining on TiVo’s part about this and that violation all willy nilly is bad for the DVR biz, and is confusing honest consumers. Oh, the ethics of it all.
If TiVo really wants to make a buck by filing suits, its people should get together with Apple’s people over lunch; after all, Apple is the king of filing every suit under the sun in hopes of making a buck later on.
June 2nd, 2008
urban legend around the halls of charlie, Echostar, is that echostar backed out of a a deal to license Tivo’s DVR the day after some Tivo folks – for what ever reason – left some equipment there. Probably not true that they needed it to reverse engineer it… but maybe they did. Either way on that one thing Echostar does have a corporate culture of cutting corners to pinch more than pennies.