Techdirt. Stories about "rovi" Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us Techdirt. Stories about "rovi"http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Tue, 13 Nov 2012 07:30:16 PST You Can Take The Company Out Of The DRM Business, But You Can't Take The DRM Business Out Of The Company Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121112/02205621012/you-can-take-company-out-drm-business-you-cant-take-drm-business-out-company.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121112/02205621012/you-can-take-company-out-drm-business-you-cant-take-drm-business-out-company.shtml 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?

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]]> but-of-course http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20121112/02205621012 Tue, 2 Aug 2011 12:14:01 PDT Hulu Sued For Violating 'TV Guide' Patent Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110802/03463415356/hulu-sued-violating-tv-guide-patent.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110802/03463415356/hulu-sued-violating-tv-guide-patent.shtml 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.

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]]> because-without-that,-no-one-would-have-thought-of-it http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110802/03463415356 Wed, 12 Jan 2011 04:36:49 PST Rovi Sues Amazon For Not Licensing Its Electronic TV Guide Patent Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110105/03393312527/rovi-sues-amazon-not-licensing-its-electronic-tv-guide-patent.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110105/03393312527/rovi-sues-amazon-not-licensing-its-electronic-tv-guide-patent.shtml 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?

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