Hasta La Gadget!

We’ll let the analysts make sense of TiVo’s new projection that it will lose $8 to $10 million in the third quarter, larger than Wall Street expectations while projected revenues are lower — we’re too busy adding Verizon and AT&T to the patent battlemap. Today it filed complaints against both for violating three of its DVR-related patents — Nos. 6,233,389 B1 (“Multimedia Time Warping System”), 7,529,465 B2 (“System for Time Shifting Multimedia Content Streams”), and 7,493,015 B1 (“Automatic Playback Overshoot Correction System”) if you must know — seeking damages for past infringement and a permanent injunction. We’d assumed it would wait until settling things with DISH to push forward against other companies, but it looks like we’re not the only ones getting impatient. Beyond the legal slapfight there’s a few nuggets for the bleep bloop faithful, with the Comcast TiVo on-line scheduler beginning to roll out in Boston plus further expansions on the way and the due-in-2010 DirecTV HD TiVo still on track — we’ll need a few seasons of Law & Order queued up before this mess ever gets resolved.

Read – TiVo Swings to Loss, Files Infringement Suits
Read – TiVo Reports Results for the Second Quarter Fiscal Year 2010 Ended July 31, 2009
Read – TiVo Files Complaints for Patent Infringement Against AT&T and Verizon Communications in United States District Court, Eastern District of Texas; Seeking Damages and Injunction

Filed under: Home Entertainment

TiVo projects larger than expected losses, still taking the patent fight to AT&T and Verizon originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 Aug 2009 20:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Corporate legal teams are so large, so powerful, and often so evenly-matched that when you combine them with the glacial wheels of justice, patent disputes can take years to resolve — in fact, we’d say it’s the rule rather than the exception — and inevitably, they end in anticlimactic fashion with the alleged offender agreeing to shell out some fraction of the plaintiff’s original request in exchange for sweeping the whole matter under the rug. Nokia’s had its fair share of such spats, and one that’s been dogging the company for a good long while now is with InterDigital, which has been systematically targeting firms in the industry for years with claims that it holds patents inherently required for UMTS — in other words, if you make UMTS gear, you automatically owe InterDigital money. Of course, Nokia has been politely disagreeing with that claim all along, and the US International Trade Commission has just issued an initial determination in its favor, saying that it doesn’t violate the four patents InterDigital’s all worked up over. For the record, the US ITC has been investigating this issue for a solid two years now, so yeah, if someone’s ripping off your IP, don’t expect a speedy resolution. The commission’s initial determination will be followed by a final, binding determination this December; in the meantime; Espoo “will continue to present its case.” Now that we think about it, we’re pretty sure we saw this episode of Law & Order already.

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless

Nokia / InterDigital patent drama continues with ITC ruling in Espoo’s favor originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 14 Aug 2009 21:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hey, remember that seemingly random patent case from May in which a federal jury awarded a company called i4i Ltd $200 million in patent damages against Microsoft? Things just got worse for Redmond: the judge in the case today issued a permanent injunction against sales of Word 2003, Word 2007, and any future versions of Word that can open .xml, .docx, or .docm files containing “custom XML.” Yeah, no kidding — that’s pretty much all of ’em. At issue is i4i’s patent on a method for reading XML, and obviously Microsoft’s vowed to appeal, so expect this injunction to be stayed pending that appeal in short order — and also expect Microsoft to eventually either find a way to win or simply pay up, since there’s no way it’ll let anyone kill Word. We’ll see what happens. Word.

Update: CNET has a quick interview with i4i Chairman Loudon Owen, who says that he himself uses Word and that i4i isn’t trying to “stop Microsoft’s business” or “interfere with all the users of Word out there.” It’s an interesting read, go check it out.

Update: Not that it should come as a surprise to anyone at all, but Microsoft has confirmed that it’ll be appealing the decision.

Filed under: Software

Microsoft forbidden from selling Word, will probably keep selling Word originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 12 Aug 2009 11:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Creative’s made itself pretty well acquainted with the FCC as of late, and it looks like it’s also been doing its part to keep the old Patent and Trademark Office busy as well, with a recently revealed application showing off some plans for a drag and drop touchscreen interface. That’s obviously somewhat of a tricky area to patent, but it seems that Creative’s big new idea is something called “action tabs” that could be used for something as simple as tabbed web browsing, but would apparently also be applied to other OS elements as well — letting you drag something to the clipboard, for instance, or drag a photo to an action item of some sort. Just as interesting as the patent itself, however, is the fact that it’s assigned to Creative subsidiary 3DLABS, now known as ZiiLABS, makers of the touchscreen-based Zii EGG. Like we said, interesting.

[Via Tech in Hiding]

Filed under: Handhelds, Software

Creative patent filing reveals drag and drop interface with “action tabs” originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Aug 2009 12:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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RIM’s no stranger to playing different tricks with touchscreens, and it looks like it may have another up its sleeve, with a recent patent application revealing some plans for a hybrid capacitive / resistive touchscreen. As you might expect, the idea here is to take the best aspects from each and form one super touchscreen, which would have the general usability and “goodness” of capacitive displays, and the added benefits of a resistive screen, like better support for stylus-based input. Of course, such a screen would also likely eliminate one of the biggest advantages of resistive displays — their cost-effectiveness — so it seems safe to assume that it’d be reserved for higher-end phones to start with.

[Via Unwired View]

Filed under: Cellphones, Displays

RIM patent filing reveals hybrid capacitive / resistive touchscreens originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 05 Aug 2009 12:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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