TiVo Nabbing $490 Million in DVR Patent Settlements From Google and Cisco

TiVo has won more than its share of patent disputes pertaining to its DVR technology over the last few years, winning settlements from AT&T ($215 million), Dish Network and EchoStar ($500 million total), and Verizon ($250.4 million). The latest companies to lose against TiVo are Cisco and Google-owned Motorola Mobility. (Motorola made lots of set-top boxes for the likes of Time Warner Cable.)

According to BusinessWeek, Cisco and Google (which inherited Motorola’s legal troubles when it bought the company) will have to fork over a combined total of $490 million to TiVo, with Cisco being responsible for $294 million of that amount.

TiVo

In the wake of the settlements, TiVo enters licensing deals with companies that continue to make products using TiVo’s patents.

All told, TiVo has won about $1.6 billion in awards and settlements over nearly a decade, but still the company is struggling. In fact, even with nearly half a billion more dollars coming, the company’s share price dropped 17 percent today because $490 million was significantly less than analysts were expecting.

Motorola Mobility
Image  credit: Bloomberg

TiVo, which at one time was a proprietary eponym for “DVR”, is apparently simply losing money as a business, and now that the lump sums from all these settlements is starting to dry up, it seems the company could be in trouble.