TiVo granted patent on recording Season Pass subscriptions by priority
By Nilay Patel 
posted February 18th 2010 3:48PM
posted February 18th 2010 3:48PM
Now, TiVo has been anything but shy when it comes to suing over its other hard-fought DVR patents, so we'll have to see how the company decides to use this new bit of IP leverage; patents that have been pending for this long aren't exactly secrets to anyone, and we're sure TiVo's competitors have been thinking of clever ways to design around it. (One bit that jumps out: the priority list has to contain both "a viewer's explicit preferred program selections for recording" and "inferred preferred program selections for recording," so DVRs that don't auto-record like TiVos could potentially be excluded.) Of course, we'd rather just see TiVo retake the lead in the DVR space with some entirely new ideas -- we'll see what happens next month.
holy crap a transparent tv screen .. oh .. this is about TiVo .. my bad ..
Is that just me, or did anyone else wonder what the show Modem Family was about.
@waterwagen I actually watch it sometimes
-it's about this extended family with 3 main parts:
the dad & his new wife from Columbia and his son
the daughter and her family
the son and his boyfriend and their baby
@University of Pi haha, yeah, but I actually saw it as ModeM Family.
@waterwagen
It's an animated show about a family of modems. Dad is a cable modem and Mom's a DSL Modem. The kids are all ISDN Modems. There's also a special needs son who's a 1200k modem. He keeps trying but it just takes him longer than the others.
@Jeff P Wouldn't it be more correct that the kids are the newer generation of modems like VDSL2+ he is a really smart kid but he just some times seems to be in his own world when you contact him at a distance, and he is kind of shy so he doesn't speak everything out loud so he can be hard to hear in a croud.
and good old grandpa 9600baud grandpa is getting kind of slow he always speaks of the good old .com days and is rambling about something called altavista. :P
@nezzdk
Yep, you're probably correct. I've got it all backwards.
@nezzdk
I think you mean dial in BBS not .com or altavista
Modem family? >.
@Bobdiggitydog Same as Califomication.. tight spacing.
Without being a lawyer or reading the actual text of the patent, there is some wording in there about including shows it thinks you'll like. Maybe that could be a loophole in that not all DVRs use the predictive method like Tivo does..?
@jetsaredim I sure hope so. Even if this concept was novel at the time, taking 10 years to approve a patent is unacceptable. Now Tivo is in the position of controlling a patent for functionality that has been adopted as industry standard.
..remember that..
..how have you
"and shows the DVR things I'll like" is the caveat. My DVR uses "series" based recording, and a priority scale, and forward looks when resolving priority to see if it can skip one program now and catch it again later in the week in order to avoid priority, but it does not make SUGGESTIONS nor does it support "ratings" other than a simple priority list, and certainly not ratings input by others. As its a single sentence in the patent, My DVR (and the 2 other models I've also owned) would not seem to infringe at all.
@zelannii Suggestions (or anything like it) is not required for infringement. It's just one element of the claim.
tivo is apparently dyslexic?
When you can't innovate, litigate!
@Abe
They did innovate. That's what got them the patent. It's hard for them to compete with the cable companies though, since the DVR's the companies provide can be bundled. Most people who use TiVo have to jump through hoops to make it happen.
The TiVo name carried them for awhile, but even that is dying off.
@trainwrecka
But if they try to argue that simply prioritizing what to record in the event that number of shows > number of tuners, they would not be innovating, that's plain common sense. That would be like patenting a yield sign.
@trainwrecka
Adding a Top-of-the-Pops rating to your list of recording rules is not "innovating" by any stretch of the imagination. This is freshman CS stuff.
@Abe
TiVo is THE poster child of defending their innovations from a market they single handily created. Everyone wants in on what they came up with, and unlike other sue happy companies, TiVo actually PRODUCES ACTUAL PRODUCTS.
You seriously can't fault TiVo for this. They are the reason why patents exist.
So much for "non-obvious"
@fdasfdsafdsa I agree that any patent that essentially combines two pre-existing ideas in the expected manner should be tossed out. This is getting pretty ridiculous.
This won't apply to anyone else, because no one else does suggestions.
Nice you got a screen grab from here in Chicago. Modern Family rocks!
Now if only my Comcast HD DVR would support external storage, I'd be set. C'mon Comcast, er xFinity (stupid, stupid stupid name), why don't you let me plug in my USB HD?
First, its patent number #7,665,111. I love that the obvious typo is just blindly copied by every other site taking engadgets feed too...
And yup, if you read the patent which you can find here:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=tivo.ASNM.&OS=AN/tivo&RS=AN/tivo
you'll see that Claim 1 includes "inferred preferred program selections" (e.g. suggestions, don't you love lawyers?) which Yup, seems like if you don't do suggestions you're off the hook.
So either the lawyer didn't know what he was doing and should have broken out the filing so that the suggestions were part of a separate claim OR the patent office found prior art or considered it too obvious if you didn't include suggestions...
@Fanfoot Good catch on the typo -- I have to kick this cold, the cough syrup is killing my accuracy.
And I linked the patent PDF above, since that URL you have will eventually expire.
Seems like you can make a case that if the number of inferred program selections is equal to zero that it is the same as not making inferred program selections.
Ahh. A patent on a list. I hope nobody patents my grocery list, else I'll never know what to buy at the store without paying a license fee!
@Anatidae
No. It's not just a list. It's an ORDERED list. The innovation is in the ordering.
@jedi
Yep, and the way TiVo does it is pretty brilliant.
Today is probably a good day to own stock in TiVo. They had a ton of DVR patents before, but this one extends to not only to hardware, but into software as well. It's something nearly everything that records will be using.
@(Unverified)
What Tivo does is pretty mundane. You are just too ignorant to realize otherwise. Unfortunately, it is this sort of ignorance that holds sway at the PTO and in the courts.
This patent nonsense deprives average practitioners the ability to benefit from the product of their own intellect.
I hope tivo shows off something awesome in march, but if they release another $600 dollar box they are completely dreaming, and microsoft will likely eat their lunch with the next xbox.
I'm just glad DirecTV has nothing to worry about on this one.