In defense of AT&T

Jan 21, 2010 09:56 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft is not the company to leave its partners hung out to dry. Case in point: the software giant has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against TiVo in an attempt to back partner AT&T, which has been involved in an intellectual property legal dispute with the DVR maker since August 2009. Microsoft is alleging that TiVo infringes on two of its DVR patents that are at the basis of popular features integrated into products designed to offer television on digital video recorders. At the same time, the Redmond company also asked to intervene in the lawsuit between AT&T and TiVo.

The lawsuit filed by TiVo against AT&T involves technology from Microsoft, a situation which made the software giant step in. TiVo alleges that AT&T infringes on no less than three of its patents with its U-Verse system. AT&T U-Verse is an IPTV television service which has at its basis Microsoft's Mediaroom Internet Protocol television platform.

The three patents that TiVo has accused AT&T of infringing involve the multimedia time warping system, designed to “allow the user to store selected television broadcast programs while the user is simultaneously watching or reviewing another program,” the automatic playback overshoot correction system for predicting “the position in the program material where the user expects to be when the user stops the fast forward or reverse progression of the program;” and the system for time shifting multimedia content streams responsible for converting TV streams to a Moving Pictures Experts Group (MPEG) formatted stream.

In its turn, Microsoft too has opened fire on TiVo in an attempt to put a stop to the IP infringement spat with AT&T, but also because the telecommunications company has asked the software giant to indemnify it in the matter. Microsoft is alleging that TiVo’s technology violates patents it owns for a system and method for secure purchase and delivery of video content programs, as well as a system for retrieving and displaying programming information in response to selection of a category of programming information.

A Microsoft representative indicated that the company is not keen in seeing the lawsuits go all the way, but rather settle the matter. A quick resolve would imply an intellectual property licensing agreement with TiVo. Microsoft notes that negotiations are already under way. In an official response, TiVo said that Microsoft’s involvements will not deter it from pursuing AT&T.

"Microsoft's recent legal actions, including its decision to seek to intervene on behalf of its customer, AT&T, and its recent complaint against TiVo in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California do not bear on whether the AT&T products and services that are the subject of TiVo's complaint infringe the patents asserted by TiVo. Rather these actions are part of a legal strategy to defend AT&T. We remain confident in our position that AT&T will be found to infringe on the TiVo patents asserted."