Fresh Off Victory Over Dish, TiVo Sues AT&T, Verizon

from the can't-compete?-litigate! dept

Why bother competing in the market when you can just sue everyone else? That appears to be TiVo's big strategy these days. Just a month after winning a big court victory over EchoStar/Dish over a patent that the USPTO is not really sure it should have issued, TiVo has moved on to sue both AT&T and Verizon in a nearly identical lawsuit. And, of course, you know exactly how the negotiations on this one start. TiVo will point to the headlines about the millions the the court has told Dish to pay. Whatever happened to the good old days when companies competed in the marketplace rather than in court? TiVo is a great and innovative product, no doubt. While not really the first such product, it did a great job convincing the market of the value of DVRs. But then others innovated as well, sometimes making their product even better. That's called competition and it should drive everyone to make better products. It appears TiVo would rather that the competitors be kept out of the market, rather than bothering to innovate in the market.

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Remind Me: Why Do We Let Patent Lawsuits Go On Even As USPTO Has Doubts About The Patents?

from the shouldn't-things-wait? dept

While plenty of people are familiar with the fact that NTP got $612.5 million from RIM in a patent dispute a few years back (which drew tremendous scrutiny into the realm of patents), one of the most interesting details that many people didn't follow was that at the same time as the lawsuit was going on, the US Patent Office was re-examining those same patents, and issuing rejections of the very same patents. Despite the USPTO even rushing to announce its problems with the patents way ahead of schedule, the judge chose not to wait for the final rejections and pressured RIM into paying up.

This sort of thing happens all the time.

For example, just weeks after TiVo was practically dancing in the streets over its latest wins over EchoStar in a patent dispute over basic DVR functionality, the USPTO has given an initial rejection on some of the claims at issue in the case. While TiVo is quick to downplay this as just the first step in a long process (which it gets to respond to), it's being a bit misleading in suggesting that this sort of thing happens all the time. Sure -- it happens a lot, but to questionable patents. It seems that, if the USPTO has agreed to review a patent and clearly the examiners have serous questions about the patentability of certain claims, shouldn't any lawsuits that hinge on those patents be put on hold?

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TiVo Goes Dr. Evil On EchoStar: One BILL-ion Dollars, Please

from the make-this-end dept

TiVo and EchoStar (DISH) have been involved in a long and convoluted patent battle over basic DVR functionality. TiVo's certainly been winning. Personally, the whole thing is pretty ridiculous to me. The market is better served by competition, and having multiple players focusing on providing better DVR functionality (and, trust me, having used both their DVRs, they could both stand for some significant improvements) rather than spending money on lawyers. Either way, TiVo seems to be shooting for the moon with its latest demand that Dish pay up $1 billion dollars (Dr. Evil laughter inserted here), which is a lot more than the hundreds of millions most folks expected. One doubts they'll actually get that much -- the number is probably more of an effort to get EchoStar to just settle. But, if they do get numbers like that, you have to admit that buying that cow in Texas was a great investment.

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TiVo Bought Some Bull In Marshall, Texas (Literally)

from the or-was-it-the-jury-that-bought-it? dept

For years we've discussed how patent holders love to file infringement lawsuits in Marshall, Texas. There are a variety of reasons for this, but a big part of it is that the court and the juries there seem extra sympathetic to patent holders. However, when TiVo took Dish Network to court in Marshall, apparently it wanted a little extra something to help push it over the edge. So it bought some bull. Literally.

Two weeks before the jury handed TiVo a $74 million award, the company apparently "paid the record-breaking sum of $10,000" for a "Grand Champion Steer" right in Marshall, Texas. Oh, and they renamed it TiVo. TiVo's lawyers insist it had absolutely nothing to do with winning the case, but, still... why buy the bull? Apparently Samsung -- no stranger to patent litigation -- is also getting involved in "civic" causes in Marshall. There's a local celebratory event called "Stagecoach Days" in Marshall that has recently been (wait for it...) renamed as Samsung Stagecoach Days. Of course, apparently one jury consultant warns that this kind of thing can backfire:

"Buying a cow like that I think is bullshit. I think it's insulting -- the idea that people are so simple that something like that will influence the case."

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Blockbuster Takes Its PPV Streaming Movies To TiVo

from the lessons-learned dept

Blockbuster announced back in November that it would begin offering pay-per-view movie downloads, but its plan had a couple of major pitfalls: it required consumers to buy a proprietary box to be able to buy the downloads, and it didn't offer a very wide selection. It's cracked one of those, sort of, by making its OnDemand service available to TiVo users, who will now be able to access it alongside rival services from Netflix and CinemaNow. It's heartening to see that Blockbuster has realized the standalone box strategy isn't viable, even if others haven't figured it out. The lesson is pretty clear: if you're going to come out with a streaming service, you're going to fail if you force users to buy a proprietary box, and your only chance to succeed is by making it available on as many platforms as possible. That's not a guarantee, mind you, as there are still plenty of ways to screw things up, or to have things screwed up for you by movie studios.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Google's Ad Success Has Lessons For Television

from the ads-are-content dept

Patri Friedman points to a fascinating post by a Yahoo employee (speaking only for himself) speculating on the reasons Google is clobbering Yahoo in the search ad market. In a nutshell, Google was a lot quicker to figure out the benefits of ranking ads by ad quality rather than simply auctioning off the top slot to the highest bidder. Given that online advertisers pay on a per-click basis, more relevant and useful ads can generate more clicks -- and therefore more revenue -- than lower-quality ads. Because ads with higher click-through rates became more highly ranked, advertisers began to compete on relevance as well as price. They began to optimize their ads to generate higher click-through rates. The average quality of ads on Google began to improve. And here's the really important point: as the quality of Google ads got better, users started to discover that Google ads were actually useful and relevant, and they got in the habit of looking at them. This is an example of a principle Techdirt has been emphasizing for years: ads are content, and they're a lot more effective if they contain information people actually want. Google's experience belies the conventional view that ads are a necessary evil users have to put up with as the cost of getting the content they want.

Nowhere is that conventional view of advertising more entrenched than in the television industry, which is constantly wringing its hands (and filing lawsuits) over the detrimental impact of devices like the TiVo and Replay TV that include ad-skipping technology. I think the Google example demonstrates how short-sighted that attitude is. With a little ingenuity, TV networks could be using devices like TiVo the same way Google uses click-through statistics: as a way to gather data on user attitudes toward different ads. If networks priced ad inventory the same way Google does, giving a discount to advertisers whose ads had lower skip rates, advertisers would respond by trying to make more entertaining and relevant ads. And as ads became more entertaining and useful, viewers would be less likely to pick up the remote and push the "30-second skip" button.

Even more radical, the networks could be using TiVo-like devices to distribute shows and ads directly over the Internet. In that case, the device could display a different set of ads to each viewer, with the ads chosen based on the individual viewer's show-watching and ad-skipping history as well as some basic demographic characteristics. For example, users who frequently skip car ads would be shown fewer car ads. Viewers under 40 would never be shown ads for adult diapers, and all-male households would never be shown ads for feminine hygiene products. Such a system would be a win-win for both advertisers and viewers: viewers would find ads more useful and less irritating, while advertisers would be willing to pay higher rates for ads that were precisely targeted at relevant subgroups. And that would solve the "TiVo problem" once and for all: not by forcing users to watch ads they'd rather avoid, but by finding ways to show users ads they actually find entertaining and useful.

Timothy Lee is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Timothy Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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