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1. Comment - EchoStar Wins Stay of TiVo Injunction

   (Aug 18, 2006 - 8:22 PM)

   When TiVo applied for this patent, something
   like 16 years ago, it was not obvious that you
   could build a _digital_ tv recorder using disk
   drive technology. I proposed a digital TV set
   in the mid-1980s, and all during that time none
   of the people I talked to suggested building a
   TiVo kind of device. So, no, the original
   patent does not fail the "obviousness test".
   
   After ten years of TiVo being widely available,
   and with today's college students not being
   able to remember a time before TiVo was out,
   there is a danger of applying today's standards
   of obviousness to the early 1990's.
   
   It looks to me like EchoStar are just a bunch
   of ripoffs. They blatantly copied TiVo's stuff
   and more-or-less challenged them to sue, and
   then used their ill-gotten gains to hire a
   bunch of lawyers and PR types to stop TiVo
   from getting justice. Oh, yeah, they almost
   put TiVo out of business with their low-cost
   competition. (Nothing like stealing your tech
   to cut your costs: R&D is expensive. . .)