TiVo has announced that it has settled a patent dispute with AT&T, as both companies have entered into a licensing agreement. AT&T is said to have agreed to pay TiVo a total of $215 million, split between an initial payment of $51 million and recurring quarterly payments through 2018 totaling $164 million.
TiVo sued AT&T in 2009 for damages, alleging infringements of TiVo patents Nos. 6,233,389 B1 (a “multimedia time-warping system”), 7,529,465 B2 (a “system for time-shifting multimedia content streams”), and 7,493,015 B1 (an “automatic-playback overshoot correction system”).
The announcement follows earlier patent wins against Dish Network and EchoStar, who agreed to pay TiVo $500 million to settle lawsuits last May that had dragged on for seven years.
“We are extremely pleased to reach an agreement with AT&T, which acknowledges the value of our intellectual property,” said TiVo chief executive Tom Rogers. “The combination of guaranteed payments and future additional fees paid to TiVo in the event that AT&T’s pay TV business continues to grow in-line with consensus analyst expectations, represents hard-earned compensation for our IP enforcement efforts.”
TiVo, a digital video recording company founded in 1997 developed the first commercially available digital video recorder, making it easy for people to record programs and watch them later and to skip through advertisements.
