According to a recent press release Forgent remains on track to sue several media companies over patent infringement of PVR technology. Forgent is suing the likes fo Cable One, The Washington Post Company, Charter Communications, Comcast, TimeWarner, EchoStar and others over the patent infringement claim.This is by no means a trivial cliam either, Forgent believes that its patent describes how to build a computer-controlled video system that can play back video while recording. So it seems the company believes it owns the fundamental technology behind PVRs.
Forgent is a company that makes most of its money from royalties and going to the courts is nothing new to the company. In the shortest press release I have ever seen Richard Snyder the CEO of Forgent said "We are pleased that this litigation remains on track for a May 2007 trial."
1. Forgent is probably feeling left out of the blog love with TiVo getting so much attention for theirs. You can read more about the claims at Michael C. Smith's excellent legal blog.
http://mcsmith.blogs.com/eastern_district_of_texas/2006/12/supplemental_cl.html
It sounds like Echostar and Scientific Atlanta had been holding out information on how their PVRs work, so the judge order them to knock that off. There was also an issue over testimony that they could use.
Posted at 11:50AM on Dec 15th 2006 by Davis Freeberg