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El Reg has the story on chipmaker Broadcom sueing Netflix for shrinking the set-top box market, which it claims could not be done without infringing its patents.
In a lawsuit [PDF] filed late last week in California, the San Jose-based Broadcom – which designs and sells chipsets used in millions of set-top boxes – argued that "Netflix has caused, and continues to cause, substantial and irreparable harm to the Broadcom Entities [that] sell semiconductor chips used in the set top boxes that enable traditional cable television services.
"Upon information and belief, as a direct result of the on-demand streaming services provided by Netflix, the market for traditional cable services that require set top boxes has declined, and continues to decline, thereby substantially reducing Broadcom's set top box business."
The claim is that Netflix must have used Broadcom's "novel" patents to run its service
"Upon information and belief, Netflix could not displace traditional cable television services, or could not do so as effectively, without the use of the Broadcom Entities' patented technology"
Broadcom wants a jury trial, royalty fees, attorney fees, and damages.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 19 2020, @07:00AM (1 child)
I have ten mod points. Make my millennium, corporate whores! I will down mod you, offtopic mod you, and underware mod you. And pirate all your content, especially the Dem primary debates. And Willie the Steamboat Captain. We will bring you down, and no shits will be given, and your bottom line will perish. Death to Disney! Kill the Mouse!
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 19 2020, @07:23AM
I would like to subscribe to your news letter!
(Score: 5, Touché) by Runaway1956 on Thursday March 19 2020, @07:24AM (6 children)
Gutenberg would like a few words with those box top assholes. Sales of presses have fallen off drastically in the past hundreds of years, and it couldn't have happened unless someone was infringing on his patents!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by MostCynical on Thursday March 19 2020, @09:16AM
wonder if any buggy whip makers ever tried to sue a vehicle manufacturer or a taxi cab company that used internal combustion engined vehciles..
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 19 2020, @11:40AM
Better hope people that see the logic of my parent aren't on the jury. I am so tired of all this legal interference and gaming of competition by buying Congressmen I could just puke. This ain't law...it's flat downright bullying.
(Score: 4, Funny) by DannyB on Thursday March 19 2020, @02:26PM (3 children)
I presume you mean Johann Gutenberg, who in 1455 invented the Bible. The Gutenberg Bible.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 19 2020, @04:33PM (2 children)
He didn't invent the bible. He was the first to mechanically print it.
(Score: 2) by Bethany.Saint on Thursday March 19 2020, @07:37PM
Still, I like the bit about the bible being invented.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday March 19 2020, @10:36PM
Whoosh!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Thursday March 19 2020, @09:04AM (6 children)
Some of these patents are well expired, others expire this week, and only one has an expiry date well in the future. Some cover QoS, but the problem there is that TMTOWTDI, so is their patent infringed, or are they just hoping to convince a jury that it might be if you squint the right way when looking at it? One is specific to DVDs, not streaming.
Given that they only contacted Netflix to try to extort a license agreement last September, Netflix will probably argue that Broadcom "sat on their rights " for years and the claims should be "tolled " - disallowed because such a long period of inaction precludes any claim. After all, they can't claim that they weren't aware of Netflix - it was seriously chewing into their sales.
The link to the lawsuit PDF which doesn't work in the article [regmedia.co.uk] - please fix. Or not. :-)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 19 2020, @12:58PM
Thus the filing date of the lawsuit, threat of a jury trial, and prayer for a settlement.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Barenflimski on Thursday March 19 2020, @04:56PM (2 children)
What is TMTOWTDI?
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday March 19 2020, @05:30PM (1 child)
There's More Than One Way To Do It
(Score: 2) by Barenflimski on Thursday March 19 2020, @06:42PM
Thanks.
I'm going to make a note of that right under my definitions for AF and BAE.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 20 2020, @06:47AM
Hilarious. You claim to know all sorts about the law and have given all sorts of wrong information about it. But this one takes the cake. You literally gave the exact opposite definition of "tolled" [wikipedia.org]. Netflix would be claiming the exact opposite as they want the SoL to run, not toll. They want the legal claims to have expired and the equitable ones are estopped by laches. This is CivPro 101 stuff and you can't even get that straight. No wonder most of what else you say about the law is so wrong.
(Score: 2) by DeVilla on Friday March 20 2020, @07:07PM
They are hoping to go on a fishing expedition via discovery and further hoping they will discover some sort of actionable infringement. The expedition and exercise may lead to inspiration for future improvements to be made to Broadcom's business.
Another "acceptable" outcome would be a settlement allowing further income from these expired patents in the form of "rent".
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Bot on Thursday March 19 2020, @09:28AM (3 children)
society is progressing much, thanks to those novel patents awarded to broadcom huh?
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 19 2020, @10:45AM
How is patenting QoS "helpful"?
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 19 2020, @01:03PM (1 child)
Without ubiquitous streaming video, we wouldn't have the growing "sit on the sofa, watch Netflix and get stoned" segment of the population which has generated so much political support for the concept of UBI that the CIA (backed by Bezos) manufactured COVID-19 and released it in China (of course), so that Pence could be the first to propose distributing UBI to the masses.
Work from home, school from home, the reduction in road construction and repair costs, not to mention commercial and educational brick and mortar, should fund a good portion of UBI.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 19 2020, @04:04PM
Loliwoooooo
Here I was thinking I knew most of the crazy conspiracies, but this one really takes the prize.
(Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Thursday March 19 2020, @11:19AM (10 children)
... blow on the head from a blunt instrument.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 19 2020, @01:20PM (9 children)
That's pretty much what legal action is: severe pain and suffering for all parties involved.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Thursday March 19 2020, @01:43PM (8 children)
"Severe pain and suffering for all parties involved ".
Not for the lawyers who came up with this latest stupidity, nor the lawyers who will defend against it, nor the whole civil court system that couldn't exist without lawsuits for everything. They're making out like gangbusters.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1) by VacuumTube on Thursday March 19 2020, @02:14PM
Taking their cues from politicians, some lawyers are becoming increasingly shameless in their greed.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 19 2020, @02:22PM (6 children)
Do the devil or his demons suffer in hell? As for making out like gangbusters, the people who write the rules do tend to win the game more often:
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by fadrian on Thursday March 19 2020, @03:55PM (5 children)
It may well be that the Congress has too many lawyers for its own—and the nation's—good.
And it may well not be.
Who do you want writing laws? People who know the law or morons that will make word salad of statutes that will be overturned five times before they do what they're supposed to do and allow even more loopholes or unintended consequences?
Somehow, people always seem to think that legal expertise is a bad thing. It's not. It's as necessary a skill in running a law-based society as much as programming is for a modern economy.
That is all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 19 2020, @04:38PM
The problem is Congress has too many corrupt moron lawyers.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 19 2020, @05:00PM
The problem is that nobody has a check on the lawyers, and they're doing much worse things than the programmers would [youtube.com] given similar freedom to operate.
Minimum wage is still sub $10 per hour, but ANY adversarial legal action in our court system is expected to cost upwards of $3K per party and climb quickly from there. Two month's wages+ to get anything out of the courts - it's anything but a system of justice for the people. And that's just the clearly visible bottom end, the corruption escalates quickly from there.
Laws and lawyers do indeed have value, but not nearly the amount of value which they ascribe to themselves. And in the legislature that legal expertise is more often put to use slipping money to friends, family, and self than it is in writing good laws that operate for the maximal benefit of their constituents. Especially at the national level, the politicians are many layers removed from the drafting of the legal language - most of the elected never put eyes to page before voting on legislation.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mr_bad_influence on Thursday March 19 2020, @06:59PM
In reality, how many bills/laws are actually written by those congress critters and how many are written by corporate and special interest groups? Lawyers and legal training have no bearing on the laws enacted and certainly don't benefit the common folks.
(Score: 1) by ze on Thursday March 19 2020, @07:33PM (1 child)
I'd rather we had policy makers who understood anything about what they're making policy about, rather than just how to best game the system for their own interests.
I think if we had scientists for lawmakers, even if they totally ignored their legal advisers, we'd still probably be better off than with these lawyers who totally ignore their science advisers.
Not to mention that the convolution of a legal system is proportional to its corruption; these lawyers are manufacturing the false need for themselves to start with.
IMO nobody who passes the legal/business culture's barriers to entry into our system of political power is actually qualified or trustworthy to have any power...
Though, tbh, I think anyone voluntarily seeking power should be disqualified from it for that reason alone. Taking real responsibility for what they're supposed to be responsible for isn't something anyone does very willingly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 21 2020, @11:47AM
How about every single time they have a random test to prove that they actually know the law and its contents before it can go in?
Also, ban riders. Any rider. Of any kind.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Phoenix666 on Thursday March 19 2020, @01:48PM (1 child)
Netflix is probably the only thing keeping the nation calm at all right now while it's under increasing lockdown. Parents who are trying to work from home are propping their kids up in front of the screen and hitting 'play' on entire seasons of kids' programming.
Broadcom will be lucky if the judge summarily dismisses their suit. If they are unlucky, they will succeed in their lawsuit, take Netflix down, and then get lynched by the nation (and possibly large swathes of the world).
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 20 2020, @10:12PM
Yep and Netflix is brainwashing them with Cultural Marxist, anti-white, Jewish propaganda.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 19 2020, @01:51PM (2 children)
When the bill on in-house surveillance comes due, I'm wondering how many of those patents will be evidence of their involvement in criminal conspiracy. Has anybody taken apart one of those boxes recently? Is anybody doing signal analysis on the out of band comms that they are doing from peoples houses?
I've been waiting years for the article on: "We tapped our cable box, and this is what we found."
Incidentally, these guys don't just make cable hardware. I guess I'll have to a closer look at the chipsets in my consumer electronics from now on. Because these dirtbags aren't getting a red cent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 19 2020, @02:10PM
Good luck with that. If you're interested I can also point you towards some windmills.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 19 2020, @08:10PM
This sort of stunt from Broadcom is not unexpected. That is one reason i think RPis are the worst SBC boards ever. Broadcom sucks.
(Score: 4, Touché) by DannyB on Thursday March 19 2020, @02:31PM (6 children)
Don't video games also contribute to loss of Broadcom's customers' Cable TV box business?
And what about books?
Or, heaven save us all, . . . going outside! This thing called sunlight. (or moonlight)
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 19 2020, @04:29PM
Don't worry, they just outlawed that this week.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday March 19 2020, @09:31PM (2 children)
Not to mention work. People tend to not watch cable TV while they are working. Clearly employers are shrinking the cable box market by making people work, thus obviously every employer violates Broadcom's patents!
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday March 20 2020, @02:25PM (1 child)
They say: "hard work never killed anyone".
But why take the risk.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 21 2020, @01:27AM
Isn't their a song about that [wikipedia.org]?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 21 2020, @11:49AM (1 child)
The music industry is also responsible, surely, for reducing their market
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 21 2020, @01:18PM
What about cinemas?
or free to air TV?
or other cable companies?
or Youtube?
or Tiktok?
(Score: 1) by DimestoreProstitute on Thursday March 19 2020, @04:23PM
Summary judgement: hell no, with prejudice.