TiVo Maintains Dominance in Patent Lawsuits over Digital Video Recorders

San Diego – On the brink of trial, TiVo Inc. reached a massive settlement agreement with Motorola Mobility Inc., Time Warner Cable Inc., and Cisco Systems Inc. to end the patent infringement disputes brought by all sides.

The $490 million settlement will bring to a close multiple cases in which TiVo claimed that its competitors infringed on its patents for set-top cable boxes.  Both brought in U.S. District Court in Texas’ Eastern District, these cases are just a few of the many patent infringement cases TiVo has brought against its competitors in recent years.  Based in Alviso, Calif., TiVo was the first major company to patent a device that digitally records live television and it has defended its patents aggressively since then.

In the case between TiVo and Motorola, Illinois-based Motorola first brought a lawsuit against TiVo in California court, alleging infringement on its U.S. Patent Numbers 5,949,948, 6,304,714, and 6,356,708.  TiVo disagreed and filed its own patent infringement counterclaims in Texas, citing its U.S. Patents numbered 7,493,015 and 6,792,195.  This settlement came just in time, as trial was set to start on June 10th.

As part of the settlement reached Friday, Motorola’s share of its dues to TiVo will be split between former owner Google and its new owner Arris Group, Inc.  Google bought Motorola in 2012, but then sold off the Motorola Home subsidiary, the manufacturers of the set-top boxes at fault, to Arris.  Both Google and Arris will pay licensing fees as terms of the agreement.

TiVo’s battle against Cisco took a similar trajectory, with Cisco attempting to invalidate TiVo’s patents, and TiVo firing back in Texas federal court with a patent infringement lawsuit of its own.  The digital recording giant accused Cisco and Time Warner of violating its patents ‘015 and ‘195, just as it did in its case against Motorola.

This continues a successful string of patent infringement cases for TiVo, which has collected $1.6 billion in patent litigation settlements.  The company had previously been awarded $250 million from lawsuits against Verizon Communications Inc. and $215 million from AT&T Inc.