remotecontrol.jpgSan Diego – A jury trial for a patent infringement lawsuit that TiVo has filed against AT&T and its U-verse TV platform has been delayed until January.  TiVo initially filed the complaint in 2009  over patents relating to DVR technologies.  The complaint seeks damages for past infringement and a permanent injunction against AT&T.

The delay in the trial could possibly give the two companies more time to reach a settlement involving allegations that the DVR that AT&T deploys in U-verse homes violates patents owned by TiVo.  The three patents at issue describe a “Multimedia Time Warping System,” a “System for Time Shifting Multimedia Content Streams,” and an “Automatic Playback Overshoot Correction System.” 

Back in May, a judge reached a $500 million verdict in favor of TiVo from an ongoing patent infringement lawsuit with EcoStar and Dish Network after TiVo attorneys convinced the court that the two companies had continued to replicate the Time Warp functionality in their set-top boxes. 

TiVo CEO Tom Rogers said that the Dish Network settlement increased the value of TiVo’s patent portfolio.  He stated, “There’s just no doubt that successful litigation improves the value of a patent portfolio.  And so battle-tested patents, we think, improve the value of the patent portfolio more than simply the quantity of patents that might be out there.”