Mediaocean said it was issued a U.S. patent for a system that verifies that ads being served by a legitimate publisher, preventing fraud and other keeping advertisers away from other non-suitable inventory.

The technology is being integrated into the Mediaocean technology following the company’s acquisition of Flashtalking and is expected to lead to other derivative patents being issued.

“Our innovations in the verification technology space allow the advertising industry to embrace a world where we shift from an auditing approach to a preemptive one,” said John Nardone, President at Mediaocean. “Going forward, we won’t just chase and penalize bad actors, or identify fraud or inventory which is non-safe or non-suitable after the fact, but we will weed it out before ads are served and put a premium on transparency at the root.”

Also Read: Mediaocean Agrees to Acquire 4C Insights

The patented technology was invented by Asaf Greiner, general manager, verification, at Mediaocean and Zac Sadan, GM verification at Mediaocean, for Protected Media, which was acquired by Flashtalking in February.

“Our patented solution is a publisher or broadcaster-side technology that verifies all transactions at the source, where they are originally created, and adds a digital signature to make the data tamper-proof and indisputable,” said Greiner. “The Mediaocean approach flips the paradigm of verification on its head to improve the advertising supply chain, ensure transparency, and ultimately provide the entire industry with trusted traffic.”■

HyphaMetrics, an independent media measurement company, was issued a U.S. patent for its next-generation cross-platform measurement system.

Patent No. 10,932,002 covers the company’s unique coreMeter hardware, its methodology for collecting data from all media sources in a household, and how the company determines individuals’ media consumption within a household.

HyphaMetrics’ system “can facilitate the measurement of everything occurring in someone’s home. We’re able to measure across all the walled gardens, across all the various silos,” said CEO and co-founder Joanna Drews. “What that produces is a true cross-platform single-source metric.”

The patent will enable HyphaMedia to deploy a “complete proprietary measurement system that is absolutely going to solve for a lot of the Holy Grail issues about omni-channel, cross-screen person-level measurement that the entire industry has been debating and asking for for a very long time," said Mike Bologna, the long-time advanced advertising head at GroupM who joined HyphaMetrics as chief revenue officer last year.

Drews was director of product management and emerging assets at Comscore and a partner in GroupM’s research practice.

Large measurement companies including Nielsen and Comscore are working on their own cross-media measurement systems.

Drews sees HyphaMetrics as a compliment for those systems, rather than a replacement.

“All of those solutions are really great at scale. They lack the granularity and the definition that we provide,” she said, adding someday, Nielsen might be one of HyphaMetric’s customers.

HyphaMetrics is in pilot mode now, according to Bologna.

“We are about to launch a field trial,” he said, putting its coreMeter boxes into about 100 homes while working with a few select partners.” He did not name the partners.

Bologna noted that the boxes are costly and that it’s expensive to recruit panels. The company previously raised $2 million, but will be raising additional funds via an equity round of financing in order to continue growing.

A lot of measurement systems use audio content recognition or automatic content recognition to determine what’s being watched. HyphaMetrics' technology uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to read what’s on the screen, Drews said. Its boxes are attached to each TV in a household. The boxes also have a router that enabled them to determine what’s being watched on streaming devices.

The systems allow HyphaMetrics to determine co-viewing, viewing personas and household viewing, Drews said.

HyphaMetrics’ three products so far are ClearviewMetrics, which measures unduplicated viewing data at the individual level across every network, program, advertisement, product placement, streaming app, gaming environment for every single device in the household; ContentMetrics, which collects real time data about who is watching what content and in what format -- live, time-shifted, or streaming – on TVs within an entire household; and MobileMetrics, granular data which demonstrates time spent in apps, simultaneous app usage, multitasking metrics, and more across mobile media environments.

TiVo announced that it has signed Sony to a multi-year extension of its IP licensing agreement. 

The video technology company, now a wholly owned subsidiary of Xperi Holding Corp., has conducted a steady stream of IP licensing extensions since settling its four-year patent dispute with Comcast in November, having  also recently signed agreements with cable operator Cox Communications and Chinese smart TV maker TCL. 

Xperi, which controls more than 10,000 patents and patent applications, said during its fourth quarter earnings call that it expects its IP licensing business to generate around $350 million in revenue in 2021. 

“We are proud to extend our licensing agreements with Sony,” said Samir Armaly, president of intellectual property at Xperi, in a statement. “Sony is a creative entertainment company with a solid foundation of technology, and we are excited to build on our long-standing relationship with them.”

Two months after ending its four-year battle with Comcast to make the No. 1 U.S. cable operator pay it patent fees for tech tied to its X1 video platform, TiVo has announced an IP licensing deal with Cox Communications, which licenses X1 from Comcast.

“Our patent license renewal with Cox Communications further confirms the substantial relevance and value of TiVo’s intellectual property portfolios, particularly in the U.S. pay-TV market,” said Samir Armaly, president of intellectual property for TiVo parent company Xperi, in a press release. 

Also read: With Comcast Suit Settled, TiVo Sets Sights on Canada

Cox is the largest privately held telecommunications company in America, and it controlled just over 3.7 million pay TV subscriptions as of the end of September. 

Cox said way back in May 2018 that 1 million of those TV customers had converted to Contour TV, a platform based on Comcast’s blueprint for the X1 video system. That was the last customer benchmark on Contour released by Cox. 

Speaking to Next TV right after announcing the Comcast deal, Armaly said putting X1 licensees  next on TiVo’s list. Notably, there’s three more such cable operators in Canada: Rogers Communications and Videotron. (TiVo signed a renewal with Shaw Communications in 2019.)

“Canada is certainly an opportunity that we’re excited to have,” Armaly said.

TiVo was purchased last year by San Diego tech company Xperi, creating an IP licensing powerhouse of more than 10,000 patents and patent applications. 

As it seeks to redefine itself as a technology company that owns the designs of its gadgetry, Comcast continues to fight for its technological independence in court.

And it's not just battling TiVo. Comcast, it seems, has a lot of patent litigation going on, much of which we know little about. 

For example, the cable operator just won a victory against Menlo Park, California-based Promptu Systems Corp., which sued Comcast back in 2017 over voice control technologies.

The U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board invalidated Promptu’s patent No. RE44,326, defined as "System and method of voice recognition near a wireline node of a network supporting cable television and/or video delivery.”

The case involving three patents was filed in March 2017 and is now being litigated in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

In March of this year, the patent board ruled against Comcast in its bid to get another patent in the case invalidated, the so-called ‘538 patent, titled, “Method and apparatus for voice control of a television control device.”

Comcast has also petitioned the patent board to review yet another patent in the dispute, No. ’196, also defined as “System and Method of Voice Recognition Near a Wireline Node of a Network Supporting Cable Television and/or Video Delivery.”

Comcast representatives didn’t immediately respond to inquiries for comment.

Promptu said it began startup life as AgileTV in 2000, a self-described “innovator in voice recognition and natural language understanding technology.

“Beginning in or about 2001, Comcast expressed an interest in Promptu’s capability of implementing a voice recognition feature into Comcast’s television cable network system,” Promptu said in its complaint. “Comcast then had no ability to adopt and implement voice recognition technology into its cable network without Promptu’s expertise.”

Both TiVo and Comcast are claiming victory Tuesday after an administrative law judge working for the International Trade Commission (ITC) ruled that the cable company violated one of the technology vendor’s patents.

Administrative Law Judge MaryJoan McNamara ruled that Comcast infringed on TiVo’s claims made for Patent No. 7,779,011, “Method and system for dynamically processing ambiguous, reduced text search queries and highlighting results thereof.”

The ruling is similar to one rendered by the ITC  back in November 2017, also in favor of TiVo and against Comcast. The resulting exclusion order from that ruling convinced Comcast to deactivate a remote recording feature in its X1 video platform.

However, Judge McNamara’s latest ruling still must be reviewed by the full ITC Commission before another formal exclusion order would be levied against Comcast.

“We are thrilled by yet another legal victory,” said Arvin Patel, executive VP and chief intellectual property officer at Rovi Corporation, a TiVo company, speaking in a TiVo statement. “This decision demonstrates Comcast's repeated infringement of Rovi’s patents. We hope that today’s decision will encourage Comcast to pay the necessary licensing fees so their customers can once again access advanced cable features.”

Notably, McNamara dismissed TiVo’s claims in regard to Patent No. 9,369,741, “Interactive television systems with digital video recording and adjustable reminders”; and Patent No. 7,827,585, “Electronic program guide with digital storage.” Claims made by TiVo on five other patents were thrown out earlier.

Related: TiVo Goes Back to ITC Playbook in Latest Comcast Patent Attack

“We view today’s initial determination to be a victory for Comcast because the administrative law judge found no violation as to two of the three patents addressed,” Comcast said in a statement. “We look forward to the full Commission’s review of the one remaining patent later this year, but we are confident, regardless, this ruling will not disrupt our service to our customers. Rovi also was unsuccessful on five other patents that it had previously withdrawn from this case. We will continue to resist Rovi’s efforts to force Comcast and our customers to make unreasonable payments for aging and obsolete patents.”

In the fight that spans not only the ITC, but multiple federal courts and several other jurisdictions, Comcast is coming off a string of victories against TiVo in the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeals Board.

But all TiVo needs is the occasional win, and the ITC has proven fruitful ground for the company.

Speaking to MCN last year, a TiVo attorney said the technology company’s goal is to litigate against Comcast over as many patents as it can, in as many venues as it is able. If Comcast is forced to disable too many X1 features, TiVo believes, it will be forced to settle.

As the only major pay TV company not paying TiVo royalties at this point, a victory by Comcast would undermine the rest of TiVo’s IP licensing business, the technology company surmises.

It's questionable how big a drip of blood TiVo would draw from this latest ruling.

An individual close to Comcast told MCN that if the full ITC Commission were to issue another exclusion order against X1 for Patent No. 7,779,011, the cable company’s users might not even notice if it stopped highlighting text in search results.

“It’s not like our customers would lose much,” the source said.

Regardless, TiVo seems determined to keep right on battling, with the tech company introducing half a dozen more patents for review by the ITC earlier this year. 

With fourth quarter sales dropping 21%, and the company plotting out the possible separation of its IP licensing and product businesses, TiVo remains committed to its patent war with Comcast.

“TiVo is fully committed to protecting its intellectual property from unauthorized use and we expect Comcast will ultimately pay a license for our innovations, just as its pay-TV peer companies do, and as Comcast itself has done in the past,” declared Raghu Rau, interim CEO of TiVo, during the company’s fourth quarter call Tuesday. (Transcript provide by Seeking Alpha.)

TiVo said its intellectual property litigation costs increased by $11.3 million in 2018, as it continues to battle Comcast in the International Trade Commission, district courts in New York, California and Massachusetts, as well as the Patent Trial and Appeals Board (PTAB).

Comcast won a series of PTAB rulings last year. Given the arcane nature of the conflict, the decisions gave the appearance, at least publicly, that Comcast had won the upper hand.

With Andrei Iancu, a former intellectual property litigator who once represented TiVo, now in charge of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Rau is confident TiVo’s appeal of those PTAB rulings will go the tech company’s way.

Rau noted that nine of the top 10 U.S. pay TV operators pay licensing fees to TiVo. Comcast stopped paying IP fees to TiVo back in 2016, kicking off the protracted legal battle.

Meanwhile, Rau also said TiVo’s strategic review of its business, initiated a year ago, was still ongoing. The company said during its fourth quarter 2017 earnings call in February 2018 that it was considering a sale of its assets.

On Tuesday’s call, TiVo conceded that it was exploring the separation of its IP licensing and product business to help expedite such a transaction. 

Rovi Corp. continues to press its three-year-old legal battle with Comcast, filing suit over unpaid patents in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

According to the TiVo company, the patents relate to DVR functions including cloud or network recording, and whole-home DVR arrangements.

“Litigation is always a last resort, but Rovi is committed to taking the necessary actions to ensure Comcast renews its long-standing license for the use of our intellectual property,” said interim TiVo CEO Raghu Rau, in a statement. "The patents involved in the new complaint represent a very small component of Rovi's worldwide patent portfolio. Regardless of size, we have a commitment to our stakeholders, licensees and customers to take all necessary action to protect this portion of our patent portfolio."

Related: TiVo CEO Rau Says Comcast Will Still ‘Ultimately Pay’ Despite Recent Patent Board Wins

Comcast responded with this statement: “Rovi has in recent years deployed its increasingly obsolete patent portfolio in an unsuccessful litigation campaign seeking to charge Comcast and our customers for technology that Rovi did not invent. Rovi launched this campaign in April 2016 by asserting infringement of 15 patents--14 of which have been held to be invalid and/or not infringed by Comcast, or have been withdrawn by Rovi. While we haven’t had an opportunity to review Rovi’s latest complaint, we will continue to defend ourselves against allegations we determine to be meritless.”

Rovi Corp. began a legal battle to get Comcast to make patent licensing payments in 2016, before its merger with TiVo. The tussle has mushroomed into a multi-venue affair spanning the International Trade Commission to various federal courts. In recent months, Comcast has won a series of victories with the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeals Board, with the government entity invalidating a number of contested Rovi patents.

In an interview with MCN last year, a TiVo/Rovi attorney said those appeals victories are relatively inconsequential to the company’s larger goal—to keep the pressure on Comcast and forcing it to settle. Having the largest U.S. pay TV operator not pay technology licensing fees would render TiVo’s patent business “untenable,” given all other major pay TV operators do pay these fees to the company.

Notably, TiVo's litigation cost spiked $1.1 million in the third quarter, part of a steadily escalating bill to sustain the fight against Comcast. 

“Over the past quarter century, Rovi has invested over a billion dollars in the research and development of our products and portfolio,” TiVo said in its statement today. “Hundreds of media and entertainment leaders around the world value Rovi’s innovations and recognize them by selecting our products and services and licensing our intellectual property. Until 2016, Comcast was one of those companies, enhancing their customers' entertainment experience with TiVo technology. After numerous attempts at negotiations, Rovi had no choice but to defend its intellectual property from unlicensed use in court.”

The Trump Administration is switching gears on patent protections for proprietary technologies that are part of a technical standard, say a chipset integral to smart phone operation, for example, or at least clarifying what gear it thinks the government should always have been in.

That came in speech Friday (Dec. 7) by Department of Justice Antitrust chief Makan Delrahim.

Delrahim, speaking at the 19th Annual Berkeley-Stanford Advanced Patent Law Institute, said: "[S]tandard-setting organizations have been given too little scrutiny when they have acted as a forum to slow down, rather than to facilitate, the adoption of disruptive innovations" and that the government has been sending the wrong signal if folks think different rules necessarily apply to standards-essential patents when it comes to redress of grievances.

Delrahim has been critical of the argument that holders of standards-essential patents (SEPs) can exclude competitors from using the technology, "including seeking injunctions against the sale of infringing goods." He called the argument bad law and bad innovation policy. 

He said some of the confusion stems from the contractual agreement SEP holders strike when their tech is made part of a standard, or the so called F/RAND commitments, and a misimpression left by the Obama antitrust division in a 2013 joint statement with the USPTO entitled “Policy Statement on Remedies for Standards-Essential Patents Subject to Voluntary F/RAND Commitments.” 

That statement advised that "In some circumstances, the remedy of an injunction or exclusion order" when an SEP is subject to an F/RAND agreement "may be inconsistent with the public interest."

Statement also points out that "when a standard incorporates patented technology owned by a participant in the standards-setting process, and the standard becomes established, it may be prohibitively difficult and expensive to switch to a different technology within the established standard or to a different standard entirely. As a result, the owner of that patented technology may gain market power and potentially take advantage of it by engaging in patent hold-up."

"As I have said before, this joint statement should not be read as a limitation on the careful balance that patent law strikes to optimize the incentive to innovate," Delrahim said, but he was clearly tired of having to clarify. 

He said the potential for confusion "remains high," so he is taking steps to clear it up. "The Antitrust Division is hereby withdrawing its assent to the 2013 joint “Policy Statement on Remedies for Standards-Essential Patents Subject to Voluntary F/RAND Commitments," he said. 

"The 2013 statement has not accurately conveyed our position about when and how patent holders should be able to exclude competitors from practicing their technologies. We will be engaging with the U.S.P.T.O. to draft a new joint statement that better provides clarity and predictability with respect to the balance of interests at stake when an SEP-holder seeks an injunctive order," he added. 

Not only should SEP patent holders be able to hold up their patents to protect them, they should also be able to "hold out" if those innovators have already sunk their investments into developing a valuable technology.

Standard-setting bodies are also on notice that Delrahim's division is casting a critical eye on their ability to collude, say, when a group of product manufacturers in a standards-setting body get together to dictate licensing terms as a condition for including a patent in a standard.

"The Antitrust Division will therefore investigate and bring enforcement actions to end practices that eliminate the independent centers of decision-making and thereby harm competitive processes, including price competition and innovation competition," he said.

TiVo has announced a renewal of its patent licensing agreement with Samsung.

The deal covers technologies used for video discovery in Samsung tablets and smart phones.

“We are proud to extend our licensing agreement with Samsung and to further enhance the consumer experience,” said Arvin Patel, executive VP and chief intellectual property officer, Rovi Corporation, a TiVo company. “Samsung is one of the most recognized and revered brands in the world. We are excited to build on our tremendous relationship with Samsung as they continue to innovate across their smartphone and tablet product lines. We look forward to continuing to add value to Samsung’s current and future product offerings, and to creating the very best multimedia experience for our customers.”

Related: or TiVo, Painful Patent Fight Persists

TiVo has managed to sustain renewal of key technology patents as it battles Comcast in court, fending off what amounts to an existential threat to its patent business—the ability of a major telecom to not pay would certainly impact future renewals with other payees down the road.

During TiVo’s third quarter earnings call last month, Interim TiVo CEO Raghu Rau downplayed a series of recent rulings against his company.

Rau said the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), which has sided with Comcast on a number of contested patents in recent months, is typically “unfriendly to patent holders,” anyway.

Rau said he’s “encouraged” regarding future rulings, given recent comments made by U.S. Patent and Trademark Office chief Andrei Iancu, a former intellectual property litigator who represented TiVo in the past. Rau said Ian has indicated his intention to “change the way the PTAB works to make it more equitable for inventors.”

Rau said TiVo plans to appeal recent PTAB decisions to invalidate a number of patents over which TiVo has sued Comcast.

“Importantly,” he added, “these PTAB challenges and results have not changed the prior ruling that required Comcast to remove the remote recording capabilities.”

In October, the PTAB invalidated Patent No. 8,578,413, which deals with remote scheduling of DVR recordings. This was the same patent that TiVo received a favorable ruling on a year ago from the International Trade Commission, leading Comcast to disable the feature in its X1 video operating system rather than pay licensing fees to TiVo.

As TiVo noted, Comcast would have to parlay the PTAB decision into a favorable federal court victory in order to clear a path to restoring the feature.

TiVo is battling Comcast in myriad venues in an important battle to get the cable operator to pay licensing fees on technologies it claims to own.

Through its merger with Rovi Corp. two years ago, TiVo controls thousands of patents, and virtually every other major pay TV operator pays licensing fees for them. But that lucrative business would unravel if Comcast were to succeed in court and avoid paying fees to TiVo.

As TiVo noted, Comcast would have to parlay the PTAB decision into a favorable federal court victory in order to clear a path to restoring the feature.

TiVo is battling Comcast in myriad venues in an important battle to get the cable operator to pay licensing fees on technologies it claims to own.

Through its merger with Rovi Corp. two years ago, TiVo controls thousands of patents, and virtually every other major pay TV operator pays licensing fees for them. But that lucrative business would unravel if Comcast were to succeed in court and avoid paying fees to TiVo.

The SCTE has been awarded the first of what it said will be many upcoming patents on technologies it develops.

The awarding by the U.S. Patent Office of Patent No. 10,139,845 represents a “new era” for the org, said Mark Dzuban, president and CEO of the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers. The patent is called “System and Method for Energy Consumption Management in Broadband Telecommunications Networks via Adaptive Power Management.”

The patented technology provides a framework for aligning network energy consumption with actual network usage, a key principle of the Adaptive Power System Interface Specification (APSIS). This spec was developed by the SCTE and its global arm, the International Society of Broadband Engeineers, as part of the org’s Energy 2020 program.

However, Dzuban said that the Patent Office is considering applications for four other SCTE patents that weren’t developed within the confines of Energy 2020.

“We’re constantly looking for new ways to help our industry,” he told MCN. This is something you’ll see from us in the future.”

So will the SCTE be collecting royalties on these patents and sharing them with its members? That’s “yet to be determined,” said Dzuban, who noted that the SCTE board will discuss monetization of the patents at a January board meeting. 

Interim TiVo CEO Raghu Rau downplayed a series of recent rulings against his company in its life-or-death patent battle with Comcast.

Speaking to investment analysts during TiVo’s third-quarter earnings call this week, Rau said the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), which has sided with Comcast on a number of contested patents in recent months, is typically “unfriendly to patent holders,” anyway.

Related: Comcast Looks to Possibly Re-Instate Remote DVR Recording Feature on X1 with Latest Patent Appeal Wins

Rau said he’s “encouraged” regarding future PTAB rulings, given recent comments made by U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Chief Andrei Iancu, a former intellectual property litigator who represented TiVo in the past. Rau said Iancu has indicated his intention to “change the way the PTAB works to make it more equitable for inventors.”

Rau said TiVo plans to appeal recent PTAB decisions to invalidate a number of patents over which TiVo has sued Comcast.

“Importantly,” he added, “these PTAB challenges and results have not changed the prior ruling that required Comcast to remove the remote recording capabilities.”

Last month, the PTAB invalidated Patent No. 8,578,413, which deals with remote scheduling of DVR recordings. This was the same patent that TiVo received a favorable ruling on a year ago from the International Trade Commission, leading Comcast to disable the remote recording feature in its X1 video operating system rather than pay licensing fees to TiVo.

As TiVo noted, Comcast would have to parlay the PTAB decision into a favorable federal court victory in order to clear a path to restoring the feature.

TiVo is battling Comcast in myriad venues in an important battle to get the cable operator to pay licensing fees on technologies it claims to own.

Through its merger with Rovi Corp. two years ago, TiVo controls thousands of patents, and virtually every other major pay TV operator pays licensing fees for them. But that lucrative business would unravel if Comcast were to succeed in court and avoid paying fees to TiVo.

The price has been steep for TiVo, which once again saw its litigation costs spike, this time by $1.1 million for the third quarter. Overall, TiVo reported third-quarter revenue of $164.7 million, down 17% year over year. The company was subsequently slammed on Wall Street for delivering lower than expected earnings per share.

Under interim CEO Rau, the technology continues the strategic review of its business, announced in its second quarter earnings call over the summer.

For now, however, its existential battle with Comcast rages on, not only in the PTAC, but in myriad venues spanning the ITC, district courts in New York, California and Massachusetts, as well as in a federal appeals court.

Rau said additional victories, such as the one it notably received in November of 2017 with the ITC, will force Comcast to “de-feature” more capabilities in its X1 platform, eventually forcing the cable company to come to terms with TiVo.

“Overall, while the particulars of the various legal fights might be complicated, our message is simple,” Raui said. “TiVo is fully committed to protecting its intellectual property from unauthorized use and we expect Comcast will ultimately pay a license for our innovations, just as its pay TV peer companies do and Comcast did in the past.”