Patent Suits Target Operators, Broadcasters
A suburban Philadelphia firm whose sole business is to buy up technology patents is trying to force large cable operators and major broadcasters to pay substantial license fees on the transmission of digital TV signals and Internet services.
If successful, the firm, Rembrandt IP Management, could pull in big money from the enforcement of patents related to the cable industry’s standard for connecting customers to the Internet and potentially throw a financial monkey wrench into the broadcast industry’s mandate to transmit all TV signals in digital form by a year from now.
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Patent litigation is nothing new. Claims of infringement are regularly lobbed against big companies by “patent trolls,” a scornful term for companies that do not produce products or services, but acquire intellectual property and make money from other people’s inventions.Rembrandt, however, has embarked on an especially sweeping assault. It is attacking two key technology standards used by the cable and broadcast industries, CableLabs’ DOCSIS and the Advanced Television Systems Committee’s digital-TV spec.
“If they’re successful, this could affect everything from the cost of cable service to the price of TVs,” said the attorney close to the litigation, who spoke only on condition of anonymity.
There’s cause for concern: Rembrandt won its first significant legal victory earlier this month.
You shouldn’t be able to buy patents! They should apply only to the original ownee. And a patent should only be owned by a person as well. Not a corporation that has more rights and privileges thana person.
It takes only one person to ruin things for everybody. Patents are stupid.
#1–Anything you own, you should be able to sell.
#2–Not stupid, very smart–but the concept has been too often misapplied and overextended.
Still–any litigation is a directed challenge at the legitimacy of the patent itself. Time for the courts to really oversee the patent office and strike most patents down due to lack of innovation as is intimated from the article itself: “On the cable front, Motorola, Cisco Systems, Arris, Thomson, Ambit Microsystems and Netgear filed a complaint last November for declaratory judgment against Rembrandt, asking a federal court to affirm that their cable-modem products don’t infringe on the patents in question. They also assert that the patents are invalid, anyway.”
That would invalidate the use of a patent. An inventor may not have the resources to execute an idea. If they always did, an idea might just stay a trade secret and be developed in house.
Patents allow inventors to stay inventors and not force them to become business men.
Lets not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Patents aren’t broken, our patent system is.
I doubt that the digital switch will be delayed. Most analog transmitters are probably being nursed along hoping to make it to the end of the service. Many still use vacuum tube finals.
Delay it as long as you want. I’m not buying an overpriced, overrated HDTV anytime soon.
The digital TV (ATSC) move was pretty carefully orchestrated by the cable industry to make sure that anybody watching TV was going to be paying the cable companies for the privilege. Off the air reception for most folks is going to be a joke. Unlike analog TV, digital means either you are getting PERFECT reception or NO reception. There’s no in-between. That TV station that you’ve been receiving that is kind of snowy, but watch-able, probably won’t come in at all after the change over. I hate patent trolls as much as the next guy, but this is poetic justice. But, follow the money, and I’m sure the courts will drop the bridge on this particular troll like a megaton of bricks.
HDTV and digital TV are not interchangable terms. Might want to get with the now.
Maybe the FTC will step in again, like they did with the patent troll N-Data and the ethernet patents it acquired, since the patent Rembrandt is claiming infringement on was previously owned by AT&T. who had agreed to license it for Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory rates
The only recent patent suit I’m aware of that actually went anywhere was with Buffalo Technology. Why should, as a matter of due course, take these stories seriously?
#1, David,
Why can’t a corporation also enjoy patent protection? Years ago I was involved in some research which my company invested considerable money in. They filed for several patents as the work was new and unique. These allowed our company to continue to advance and answered a serious social call for a potentially serious hazard (solvent sniffing).
At the same time, our corporate head was successfully sued because they blatantly abridged a patent held by a minor player. Just because you own 80%+ of the market doesn’t give you carte blanch to step on the little guy.
Yes there are some private individuals that come up breakthroughs. They, however, are rare. Even when they do originate a spectacular idea, they seldom have the resources to exploit it. It is far more likely that any new ideas come either in or by support of major industry. They have the resources to research and test the ideas.
If you think HDTV is overrated, change your computer monitor resolution to 640×480 and enjoy some near NTSC computering.
This digital TV stuff has been dragging on longer than most folks think. Around the turn of the century I bought up some shares of C-Cube, because I thought they had a great chip for decoding the TV stuff. Supposedly the government was going to do digital real soon back then, but no.
The reason for the switch away from normal broadcast TV is that the spectrum is being sold. The amount is really chump change once you give everyone a slice of that pie.
I think it would be reasonable to test the transition from analog in a target market.
Speaking of analog, I suppose everyone noticed that no telecoms in the U.S. that I know of have to provide analog coverage anymore. Some folks in the hinterlands will be bumming out big time when they can’t get any cell phone reception.
This is getting to be such a problem that the US government needs to fix the patent law so that predatory companies can’t cash in on forgotten, unused patents.
Any delay is good news for me, because my analog equipment is working just fine. I’ve got my name on a couple of those vouchers for converters, but I bet the pic quality sucks on those.
Now that you can’t buy analog sets anymore, making the transition in 2011 makes sense. As much sense as it ever made, anyway.
#15 Regarding the quality of the video coming out of the converter box, it should be very good compared to what is delivered to your set now. Hopefully your current set has A/V inputs so you can bypass the RF/IF circuitry in the set.
The current analog system uses amplitude modulation for the video just like AM radio. The AM video delivery has always been the weak link in analog tv.
I knew the patenting of “methods” would finally come back to bite us all in the collective butts.
There’s still FTA satellite but its not well known. It would be nice to see more providers giving free TV via satellite, but presently all you can get over FTA is iranian television and bollywood movies.
Wait a second, wasn’t the telegraph digital? Sure the bitrate was really really slow, and a human was used as the modulator, but it was still digital right? Is that prior art?