Gemstar sues Virgin Media over EPG patents

[braysoj1]

Gemstar-TV Guide has filed proceedings against Virgin Media in the High Court, alleging that the cable operator has infringed three of its European patents.

The company, which licenses electronic programme guide technologies to cable operators around the world, including in the US where they are more commonly known as interactive programme guides or IPGs, said today that Virgin had infringed patents pertaining to "techniques for providing certain IPGs and for handling recordings from IPGs".

"We have worked diligently to license Virgin Media for their distribution of various set-top boxes that contain IPGs covered by our patents, but negotiations did not lead to a resolution," said Samir Armaly, executive vice president for intellectual property and licensing at Gemstar-TV Guide. "The substantial value of our European patent portfolio has been recognised by leading service providers as well as leading consumer electronics manufacturers in the UK and throughout Europe. While we would have preferred to reach a commercial solution with Virgin Media, we ultimately have a responsibility to our shareholders, licensees, and other stakeholders to protect the value of our intellectual property."

info from digital spy

[MovedGoalPosts]

tut tut VM.

On the other hand since the EPG work's so poorly on most of VM's platform it's quite reasonable that VM wouldn't want to pay much for it.

[Andrewcrawford23]

and add to that the extra informaiton broadcaster provide isnt displayed as good as sky epg

i dnt personal liek gemstar they block digiguide getting the video plus numbers and now they want to sue vm for not paying for a crappy epg

[csjasona]

I don't know how anyone could reasonably be expected to pay for this EPG. To my eyes, it's obvious that they've not paid anyone to do any usability study on it - it's been designed by tech-heads alone, I would think.

[AntiSilence]

I don't find the EPG that bad, apart from nearly everyday it says "No programme information" so I have to keep power-cycling the box grrr.

[csjasona]

The Tivo EPG was years ahead of the Sky and VM ones. And that was designed 6 years+ ago.

[frattonstation]

Gemstar is 41% owned by a certain Mr Murdoch!

[popper]

OC the antiquated and STB CPU cycle sapping VM liberate middleware GUI works by using a very old and limited subset of html code, so is it really a cripped web browser and so not covered by these patents? (ignoring the fact you cant AFAIK patent software in the UK OC), question questions, we need answers it seems, and a good base for our future long term VM GUIs.

[mala786]

Interesting another News Corp Co, trying to stick It too VM but I read News Corp are in talks to sell their stake!

[csjasona]

Originally Posted by popper

...(ignoring the fact you cant AFAIK patent software in the UK OC)...

Remember, though, that VM is not registered in the UK as a company - it is registered in the USA (Delaware, I think, where it pays virtually zero business tax) and operates solely in the UK. So it is an American company and therefore subject to american rules. this is the same as NTL and TeleWest before.

[jubbi]

I dont see why everyone have such a downer on the VM EPG. It's easy to use (even my mum can use it) and well laid out. It does have issues with no program info showing from time to time, but it's only every few weeks at worst.

[batchain]

Originally Posted by csjasona

Remember, though, that VM is not registered in the UK as a company - it is registered in the USA (Delaware, I think, where it pays virtually zero business tax) and operates solely in the UK. So it is an American company and therefore subject to american rules. this is the same as NTL and TeleWest before.

They're suing in the English High Court and therefore subject to English law.

http://informitv.com/articles/2008/0...artvguidesues/

"However, some industry observers question the validity and value of the patent portfolio. Virgin Media seems less likely to be intimidated by the threat of litigation.

In its complaint, Gemstar and its subsidiaries StarSight Telecast and United Video Properties allege that three of their European patents are infringed by Virgin Media: EP0969662, EP1377049 and EP1613066.

These patents, published in 2000, 2004 and 2006, respectively cover a television schedule system, user interface for a television schedule system, and electronic programme guide with digital storage.

While electronic programme guides may have been late in coming to the United States, digital television has been available in the United Kingdom since the late nineties, providing potential prior art.

The earliest of the Gemstar patents has a primary claim for a method of navigating listings of television programmes, displaying some of the titles on screen in a grid guide format and using a cursor to select a title in a single channel format with rows of sequential programme listings.

The primary claim of the second patent includes arranging the indicators for the channel listing in a user determined order.

The third patent covers the selection of a programme listing from an electronic programme guide, enabling it to be recorded and subsequently transferred to a secondary storage device.

In the view of informitv, based on experience of patents in this field, it seems unlikely that Gemstar will prevail in this case. The failure of litigation against Virgin Media could set a useful precedent for the rest of the industry."

[papa smurf]

well in british law the villain is always right, pluss the EPG is rubbish ,so vm will probably counter claim that they've suffered thru using this bad product, and probably come out of it better off. imo

[popper]

papa, do you mean bring the Liberate owners into this case?

do we even know who owns the Liberate codebase now, its been so long since i checked, its in one of my old posts here somewere.

last time i looked, they were real low on cash flow and so had to be pulled off the public stock markets and thats a long time ago now, so its unlikely they could pay any reasonable compensation if VM were to bring them into this case.

liberates so old now though and its changed very little in that time, its so old infact, its design is likely to pre-date any of those US patents perhaps.

[batchain]

Originally Posted by popper

do we even know who owns the Liberate codebase now, its been so long since i checked, its in one of my old posts here somewere.

Liberate sold off its North American business to Double C Technologies LLC, a joint venture between Comcast and Cox.

SeaChange International bought all of Liberate's business outside of North America.


SeaChange TV Navigator:

http://www.schange.com/Products/Midd..._Navigator.asp