In the latest prong of TiVo's patent-litigation strategy, the DVR company is suing Cisco Systems for allegedly violating four of its patents less than a week after Cisco proactively sued TiVo seeking to void the same patents.
"Cisco is aware of and has had knowledge of the TiVo patents," the DVR company said in its complaint, filed June 4 with U.S. District Court for the Eastern District Of Texas.
Cisco declined to comment on the suit.
TiVo noted that it subpoenaed Cisco in its patent-infringement lawsuits against AT&T and Verizon Communications, both of which are Cisco customers. Separately, TiVo also is suing Time Warner Cable—another large Cisco customer—and has legal action pending against Motorola Mobility.
Cisco manufactures and supplies TiVo-based DVRs to the U.K.'s Virgin Media and Spanish cable operator Ono. In its lawsuit, filed May 30, Cisco said, "In connection with those transactions, Cisco and TiVo have had licensing discussions where TiVo indicated that it did not want to broadly license TiVo technology to Cisco because providing any such license to a DVR manufacturer such as Cisco would interfere with TiVo's ability to continue to assert TiVo's patents in individual lawsuits against Cisco's customers, the service providers."
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