You Can Take The Company Out Of The DRM Business, But You Can't Take The DRM Business Out Of The Company

from the but-of-course dept

Rovi is the company that used to be called Macrovision. It got its start as the annoying DRM for VCRs and expanded into all kinds of DRM over the years. In 2008, it bought GemStar-TV Guide and was then in the TV Guide producing business as well. While it eventually sold off the DRM/software parts of its business, apparently it just can't help doing what DRM companies know how to do best: breaking other technology. As reported on Slashdot, Rovi has announced that it's shutting off its TV Guide OnScreen service between now and April 13 of the next year. Apparently a number of devices, including two key Sony DVRs, will no longer work once the service is shut off. Not surprisingly, this is upsetting many owners of those devices:

When other companies decide to stop supporting something, they don't make older systems useless. Worse, Sony never came out with another DVR in the U.S. market. Why do we have to rent them? How do we get Sony or Rovi to provide at least a software patch to set the clock so the DVR can at least retain 1980s VCR functionality? Sony admits there is no fix. A thread on AVS forums has a bunch of information on TV Guide OnScreen. The TV stations who broadcast the data have been ordered by Rovi to disconnect the data inserters and ship them back.

Quite a legacy MacROVIsion has, huh?

Filed Under: drm, dvrs, tv guide
Companies: rovi, sony

Hulu Sued For Violating 'TV Guide' Patent

from the because-without-that,-no-one-would-have-thought-of-it dept

Earlier this year, we noted that Rovi (the hip new name for DRM company Macrovision) had taken a bunch of the patents it got when it bought Gemstar/TV Guide a few years back, and sued Amazon for daring to offer a TV listing on IMDB. Apparently Rovi is having so much fun suing people for doing totally obvious things that it's expanded the effort and is now suing Hulu as well. It's interesting to see that it's actually using different patents in this case, compared to in the Amazon case, but that doesn't make them any less questionable:

• 6,396,546: "Electronic television program guide schedule system and method"
• 7,103,906: "User controlled multi-device media-on-demand system"
• 7,769,775: "Search engine for video and graphics with access authorization"

Yet another case where actually doing the obvious thing to provide the obvious service you want to offer... gets you sued. America's innovation system at work.

Filed Under: patents, tv guide
Companies: gemstar, hulu, macrovision, rovi

Rovi Sues Amazon For Not Licensing Its Electronic TV Guide Patent

from the maybe-they-can-trade-one-click dept

Rovi, the DRM company which recently changed its name from Macrovision, surprised some folks three years ago, when it bought Gemstar/TV Guide. However, in that deal, Rovi got a bunch of patents, and now it's suing Amazon over its IMDB site, claiming the company is violating five different patents concerning electronic programming guides (i.e., tv listings). If this sounds ridiculous to you, welcome to today's patent system. The specific patents are listed here:

• 7,603,690: Interactive television program guide system with pay program package promotion
• 7,493,643: Program guide system with video-on-demand browsing
• 6,769,128: Electronic television program guide schedule system and method with data feed access
• 6,275,268: Electronic television program guide with remote product ordering
• 5,988,078: Method and apparatus for receiving customized television programming information by transmitting geographic location to a service provider through a wide-area network

The thing is, most of these seem pretty questionable. You could put any halfway decent programmer in front of a computer and say "I want to create a programs guide, just online" and they'd come up with much of this stuff. And now Amazon gets in trouble because IMDB includes an obvious service that fits with what IMDB does?

Filed Under: patents, programming guides, tv
Companies: amazon, rovi