In a rare legal setback for TiVo, a New York federal judge ruled this week that three patents TiVo Research asserted against TNS Media Research, including TiVo’s “holy grail” targeted-ad patent, are invalid, Law360 reported.
Per the report, U.S. District Judge Shira A. Scheindlin found that they were invalid under the U.S. Supreme Court’s Alice standard, which takes aim at abstract ideas that aren’t eligible for patent protection.
"We are reviewing our options with respect to the patent ruling, but the other important claims in the suit, including trade secret theft and breach of fiduciary duty remain unaffected by this ruling,” TiVo said in a statement.
Per the report, the TiVo patents at issue are No. 7,729,940 (Analyzing return on investment of advertising campaigns by matching multiple data sources); 8,000,993 (Using consumer purchase behavior for television targeting); and 8,112,301 (Using consumer purchase behavior for television targeting).
Despite this apparent legal setback, TiVo, historically, has had success defending its intellectual property. TiVo, which filed a suit against Samsung last fall focused on four patents, has previously settled other disputes with Motorola Mobility/Google, Cisco Systems, Time Warner Cable, Dish Network, AT&T and Verizon.
