On May 30th Cisco Systems filed a federal lawsuit in California against TiVo, over four patents related to DVRs. Cisco supplies TiVo-based DVR boxes to Virgin Media in the UK and Spanish cable operator Ono. TiVo likewise suing Verizon Communications and Time Warner Cable, which are both Cisco service provider customers, also over patent infringement.
Cisco released a statement on the matter, “Cisco is focused on its work with service providers to reinvent the television experience – Together we are transforming how consumers engage with video – bridging entertainment, social media, communications and mobility together through IP technologies. Cisco’s suit against TiVo is an effort to defend our DVR products and our customers against TiVo’s aggressive strategy of wrongfully asserting its patent claims.”
The patents Cisco is seeking judgement on are: U.S. Patent Numbers 6,233,389 (the “Time Warp” patent at issue in TiVo’s lawsuits against Dish, AT&T, Verizon, TWC and Motorola); 7,529,465 (“System for Time Shifting Multimedia Content Streams”); 7,493,015 (“Automatic Playback Overshoot Correction System”); and 6,792,195 (“Method And Apparatus Implementing Random Access And Time-Based Functions On A Continuous Stream Of Formatted Digital Data”).
In related news, a judge recently dismissed Oracle’s patent claim against Google, in an ongoing trial regarding the use of Java APIs in the development of the Android operating system.