Audio Video News

Proving that no good deed goes unpunished, cable operators and television networks may have to pay out huge amounts of money to a private company if they want to go on delivering digital television in the government-approved DTV standard.

Patent holder Rembrandt Technologies is in a litigious mood. Not content with its lawsuits against Charter, Cox, Cablevision, Comcast, and Time Warner, the company is also suing ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC. Rembrandt was founded in 2004 to fight what it refers to as "patent pirates."

Rembrandt is the owner of eight patents allegedly relating to ATSC, the DTV standard. The patents originated at Bell Labs, a Bell System orphan that has changed ownership repeatedly. Bell Labs was a member of the Grand Alliance that created ATSC during the 1980s and '90s. Others included General Instrument, M.I.T., Philips, Thomson, and Zenith.

As EETimes notes: "Although the mission of the Grand Alliance was to develop a spec by merging its members' best work, the group was unable to create a patent pool. The informal understanding at the time was that members would not assert any patents and would license them for a reasonable fee." Those informal understandings will get you every time.

Cable operators don't manufacture equipment used for HDTV delivery-- but they do buy it from companies like Motorola and Scientific-Atlanta, making them potentially liable for violating the underlying patents. The first scheduled case is a suit against Comcast in a Texas federal district court that has been notably friendly to patent holders.

The potential wild card in this litigation is the federal government. True, the committee developed the DTV standard was industry-led, but it was empowered by Congress. It was also Congress that mandated the transition to digital broadcasting, specified the end of analog broadcasting to occur in 2009, and authorized the Federal Communications Commission to oversee use of the standard.

So the big question is: What, if anything, will Washington do?