For several years Echostar has been involved in a legal battle with TiVo over Dish Network DVRs that were found to be infringing on that company’s ‘Time Warp’ patent. To date every court decision has gone in TiVo’s favor. Now they’ve managed to get the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to re-examine the patent, hoping to have it invalidated.
Echostar released a statement today saying “We are pleased that the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) granted our Petition for Re-Examination of the software claims of TiVo’s ‘389 patent, which are the subject of TiVo’s current motion for contempt. The PTO found that there is a ’substantial new question’ of patentability as to the software claims in light of prior patents that appear to render TiVo’s ‘389 patent invalid as obvious.”
Since being sued for patent infringement Echostar has redesigned their DVRs to avoid paying TiVo royalties, but if the patent is upheld they’ll owe TiVo $74 million.
Result for: us patent
According to a new patent filing, Sony is developing a wireless motion sensitive controller for the PlayStation 3 that will use a new type of “ultrasonic tracking system.”
The controller itself will break apart and combine to perform different actions.
“Game interface tracks the position of one or more game controllers in 3-dimensional space using hybrid video capture and ultrasonic tracking system,” reads the summary at the US Patent & Trademark office.
“The captured video information is used to identify a horizontal and vertical position for each controller within a capture area. The ultrasonic tracking system analyses sound communications to determine the distances between the game system and each controller and to determine the distances among the controllers,” reads the document.
You can find the full filing with pictures here: US Patent & Trademark office
