TiVo will prevail in its ongoing court battle with EchoStar becau...
TiVo will prevail in its ongoing court battle with EchoStar because its so-called “time-warp” patent is a “very difficult one to design around,” CEO Tom Rogers told the UBS conference in N.Y. Thurs. A federal jury in Tex. in…
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April awarded TiVo more than $74 million after finding that EchoStar marketed PVRs that infringed a patent covering technology used for pausing live TV and recording one show while watching the other. A federal judge last month rejected EchoStar’s motions for summary judgement and new trial, setting the stage for appeal to the U.S. Appeals Court, Federal Circuit, a process that could take 12-18 months to resolve, Rogers said. EchoStar has about 4 million combo PVR/satellite receivers and every new model it sells represents a “rolling number” that could be added to a final damages award for patent infringement, Rogers said. TiVo has a portfolio of 80 patents, but the one covering time-warp technology has the broadest applications, Rogers said. TiVo also paid $10-$12 million in signing a cross-licensing agreement with IBM earlier this fall. TiVo’s focus in the future will be on dual-tuner PVRs and the single tuner model that’s being offered free after a $200 rebate is no longer a focus, Rogers said. Part of the reason for the rebate was to speed sell off of single-tuner inventory after the dual-tuner unit “caught on much quicker than we anticipated,” Rogers said. The dual-tuner Series2 PVRs, launched in April, accounted for 58% of TiVo’s 3rd-quarter revenue. “We'll see where we are post holidays, but it’s (the single tuner) not a SKU going forward that we're going to put much emphasis on,” Rogers said. TiVo Greater China (TGC), which sells PVRs in Taiwan and China, has generated a small amount of retail sales in Taiwan since launching earlier this year. TGC signed an agreement with MSO Eastern Multimedia in Taiwan earlier this month (CED Dec 5 p7) to sell a cable modem Internet access/PVR service. “Retail sales of boxes in Taiwan is not a significant number at this point,” Rogers said. TiVo also expects to begin public field trials with Comcast in early 2007, Rogers said. The trials will test burst downloading of TiVo software as an upgrade to Motorola set-top boxes. Internal Comcast engineering tests haven’t begun yet, he said. Comcast has about 3 million subscribers with PVR-equipped STBs.