Media entertainment and audience insights company, TiVo Corporation, has announced a renewal of its IP license with Altice, Portugal. The license renewal is part of TiVo’s push for its IP portfolio into the European market, as TiVo makes sure European operators can continue to deploy advanced products that use patented TiVo innovations.
“The union of Altice Portugal and TiVo is an endorsement to our leadership in delivering the ultimate entertainment experience to consumers worldwide,” executive vice president and chief IP officer, Rovi Corporation, a TiVo company, Arvin Patel said in a press release. “Thanks to our innovative IP, Altice Portugal can deliver world class TV and compelling consumer experiences to over a million homes in Portugal.”
The arrangement affects the Meo IPTV platform of Altice, which is backed by Ericsson’s Mediaroom, which in turn was earlier controlled by Microsoft. Last year, TiVo had protested Altice’s failure to pay licensing fees for their use of TiVo technologies in the platform’s interactive program guide.
TiVo companies have decades of research and development investment to their name, from which they have been able to come up with intellectual property in the media and entertainment industry of quite some value.
“Altice Portugal’s IP renewal with TiVo is testament to our continued momentum in building an innovative IP portfolio across Europe,” said Samuel Sweet, SVP Sales, EMEAR at TiVo. “Our continued recent momentum in licensing multiple service providers in Europe this year, demonstrates how this market is an exciting area of growth for the whole TiVo business.”
Formerly known as Rovi Corporation and Macrovision Solutions Corporation, TiVo Corporation is an American technology company. Based in San Jose, California, the company is majorly into licensing its intellectual property to entities in the consumer electronics industry, such as, digital rights management, electronic program guide software, and metadata. The company is in possession of more than 6,000 pending and registered patents. The company conducts analytics and recommendation platforms for the video industry as well. Rovi acquired digital video recorder maker TiVo Inc. in 2016 and renamed itself TiVo Corporation.
Meanwhile, a week ago, TiVo lost the patent war with Comcast, when the Patent Trial and Appeal Board favored Comcast. The board refuted TiVo’s claim that the Comcast X1 feature, which allows users to continue watching a channel while they record a show on a separate network, violates a TiVo patent. As such, the board invalidated Patent No. 8,621,512, which belongs to TiVo’s Rovi division. The board ruling states that the technology would be “obvious” to anybody who designed digital video recorders.
The patent war with Comcast has cost TiVo at least USD 5.6 million in the second quarter, as its Q2 results show an overall revenue decline by 17% to USD 172.8 million.