A
federal appeals court has
upheld a ruling in favor of Amazon.com, which “entertainment
technology solutions” company Rovi had accused of patent
infringement. The ruling seems to be a strike against overly broad
patents and abusive patent assertion.
In Rovi’s lawsuit, it accused Amazon of infringing on two of its
patents: one allowing viewers to search for and select pay-per-view
programming on a screen and another creating an electronic TV
programming guide. But the U.S. District Court for the District of
Delaware determined that Rovi was interpreting its patent
claims too broadly, and the patents didn’t actually apply to what
Amazon was doing.
Rovi appealed to the the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal
Circuit, which specializes in patent appeals, asking it to broaden
the patent claim definitions so it could proceed. The appellate
court declined, siding with Amazon.
“It should be noted that this decision relates to only two
patents in our extensive portfolio,” Samir Armaly, Rovi executive
vice president for intellectual property,
told Reuters (menacingly?). “We believe that our portfolio is
even more relevant to Amazon today and going forward than when the
present litigation began in early 2011.”
That’s some serious patent troll swagger right there!
It might not be entirely fair to describe Rovi as a
patent troll—the company does seem to legitimately provide
products, and services, not just go after bigger companies with
dubious patent infringement claims. But the fact that it thinks it
can own the rights to an idea as broad as a TV guide that
appears on a screen shows some seriously annoying audacity.
The company has previously gone after Netflix and others with
similar patent infringement claims.
For more on the perils of patent litigation gone wild, see
here,
here, and
here.
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