TiVo Apparently Considering Patent Trolling As A Second Act
from the putting-the-bull-to-good-use dept
It's been said that the only thing patents encourage is more patents, and you can argue that ridiculous valuations seen on patents these days, combined with the ability to monetize them without doing a damn thing, has more and more companies seeming to be considering if there's more value in just focusing on their patents. While the Motorola Mobility purchase by Google seems to have woken up the mainstream press to the problems of the patent system, for big companies, who haven't been doing much innovating lately, suddenly there's a temptation to focus more money on investing in their patents, rather than on investing in actual innovation. There's been a lot of speculation that Kodak is now focusing on auctioning off its patents, since the company believes they may be worth much more than the rest of the company. There are rumors of RIM selling its big patent portfolio as well.And it's hitting other areas. TiVo, which has been involved in a few patent lawsuits, mentioned during its earnings call that it's paying close attention to the "evolution" of the "patent world," and that the company plans to "get the most out of this portfolio."
You have to wonder if the company still owns the bull that it bought in Marshall, Texas.
Either way, it really is a sad statement. All these companies (mostly once big companies who have failed to stay on top) now seem a lot more focused on "maximizing the value of our patent portfolio." You can understand why they want to do this in the short term, but it shows the screwed up incentives of the system. It's not the innovation that's valuable. It's the patents that usually have little to do with the actual innovation that have become valuable. So these companies start spending all their resources on patent issues, rather than actual innovation. It's the exact opposite of how the system is supposed to work.
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Re:
TiVo has also started manufacturing high-definition set-top boxes for DirecTV (DTV), the largest U.S. satellite-TV provider, which could accelerate TiVo’s customer acquisitions by the end of the year, Chief Executive Officer Tom Rogers said in an interview
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Response to: Anonymous Coward on Aug 30th, 2011 @ 3:54pm
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Response to: Anonymous Coward on Aug 30th, 2011 @ 3:54pm
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Still using TiVo
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Re: Still using TiVo
And no, I am not under contract with TiVo. I did, however, purchase a lifetime subscription for the TiVo that I have. Which is another way of saying that for the current hardware I own, I have no current or future financial obligation to TiVo.
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i concur, of course they say it's *supposed* to do this and that but anyone who really looks at it can see it was intended to do the exact opposite of what it claims to be for
or it wouldn't be doing that currently, just like with copyright
when you design a monopoly guess what it's going to do, it's going to be a monopoly, of course, and people are going to focus on the monopoly aspect of it, not the make-believe lies they try to butter it up with
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The inevitable conclusion...
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a burst coming soon
to a market near you.
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What goes unsaid, however, is that those parts of portfolios that may be offered for sale almost invariably relate to what are no longer core business interests (even big companies adapt and move into new areas of business).
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Now that is funny.
IP law the leash that will end American manufacturing capabilities.
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Where have you been?
cat /dev/video0 > tivo-sucks.mpg &
mplayer some-other-recording.mpg
Just isn't that patent worthy.
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Re: Where have you been?
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Re: Where have you been?
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Re: yes so does Google..
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Re: Re: yes so does Google..
Carmack is the man!
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To clean this up, needs an over-arching dis-incentive.
Can improve it further by even higher rates on "unearned" income, that most illuminating phrase that identifies labor as the source of wealth.
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Re: To clean this up, needs an over-arching dis-incentive.
You're very right. If this doesn't happen, our nation is likely to fail.
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Natural Evolution Of Our Society
Think of it as transcending our material limitations, to become creatures of pure thought, even as the rest of the world struggles to catch up to mere levels of industrialization that we left behind decades ago. This is what keeps us at the forefront of Civilization, the natural, perennial innovation leaders for the planet.
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Re: Natural Evolution Of Our Society
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Re: Natural Evolution Of Our Society
Thoughts without implementation have no value.
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Re: Natural Evolution Of Our Society
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Kodak is now focusing
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another biased article
Call it what you will...patent hoarder, patent troll, non-practicing entity, etc. It all means one thing: “we’re using your invention and we’re not going to pay”. This is just dissembling by large infringers to kill any inventor support system. It is purely about legalizing theft.
Prior to eBay v Mercexchange, small entities had a viable chance at commercializing their inventions. If the defendant was found guilty, an injunction was most always issued. Then the inventor small entity could enjoy the exclusive use of his invention in commercializing it. Unfortunately, injunctions are often no longer available to small entity inventors because of the Supreme Court decision so we have no fair chance to compete with much larger entities who are now free to use our inventions. Essentially, large infringers now have your gun and all the bullets. Worse yet, inability to commercialize means those same small entities will not be hiring new employees to roll out their products and services. And now some of those same parties who killed injunctions for small entities and thus blocked their chance at commercializing now complain that small entity inventors are not commercializing. They created the problem and now they want to blame small entities for it. What dissembling! If you don’t like this state of affairs (your unemployment is running out), tell your Congress member. Then maybe we can get some sense back in the patent system with injunctions fully enforceable on all infringers by all inventors, large and small.
For the truth about trolls, please see http://truereform.piausa.org/default.html#pt.
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not necessarily so
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