Dish Hit With $469 Million Verdict Over Commercial-Skipping Technology

Dish Network must pay $469 million for infringing two patents held by parental-control technology maker ClearPlay related to filtering material from streaming video, a jury in U.S. federal court in Utah has decided. From a report: The jury in Salt Lake City reached its decision on Friday in ClearPlay's lawsuit against Dish, finding that Dish's AutoHop feature for skipping commercials on its Hopper set-top boxes is covered by ClearPlay's patents. While jurors found that Dish's technology violated ClearPlay's patent rights, they rejected ClearPlay's contention that Dish copied its technology intentionally. A Dish spokesperson said on Monday that the company was disappointed in the jury's decision and will contest the verdict, potentially through an appeal. Representatives for ClearPlay did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Monday.

Profitable

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Robert Heinlein had some characters messing around with producing an ad-skipping box.

They planned a preacher-skipping box as well.

Re:

[DarkRookie2]

They planned a preacher-skipping box as well.

I just don't save channel 22.

Re:

[Petersko]

Hmmm... I recognize that invention, but I didn't think I read it in Heinlein. So after failing with Google, I went to ChatGPT and discovered it's a common trope!
---

what book was it where an inventor creates a technology to skip advertisements based on volume?

The book you are thinking of is likely "The Circle" by Dave Eggers. In the novel, a character named Bailey invents a technology called "Demoxie" that uses sound to automatically skip over ads during a TV broadcast or online video. The volume of the ad is used as a trigger for the technology to skip it.

if it wasn't that book was it another?

It's possible that the book you're thinking of is "Daemon" by Daniel Suarez. In that novel, a deceased computer game designer creates a program called "Daemon" that begins to take over the world's computer networks and infrastructure. One of the features of the Daemon is an ad-blocking technology that uses audio recognition to automatically skip over ads on TV and the internet. This technology is referred to in the book as "HijackTV."

Older book than that

I apologize for the confusion earlier. The book you are thinking of could be "The Space Merchants" by Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth. In this science fiction novel, which was first published in 1952, a future society is dominated by advertising agencies, and people's lives revolve around consuming and promoting products. The main character, an advertising executive named Mitchell Courtenay, is tasked with promoting a new product that promises to provide a way for people to escape from the constant bombardment of ads. The product is called "Puffendope," and it is a device that emits a sound that drowns out the audio of commercials.

Patent trolls are at it again

[bubblyceiling]

What? Skipping video is covered by a patent? How exactly is it different from fast-forwarding or seeking ahead? Next they'll be after companies for skipping intros and credits.

So what I think they're doing

[rsilvergun]

Is looking for a blanking signal that you'll see for a split second when a program goes to commercial break and when it returns and using that to skip the commercials. So while it's not quite as simple as skipping video it's not all that much more complicated and it's painfully obvious to anyone in the industry how you would skip commercials on a DVR.

You would think the dish being the broadcaster would control that anyway and be the ones responsible for any commercial skipping features.

Re:

[fahrbot-bot]

Is looking for a blanking signal that you'll see for a split second when a program goes to commercial break ...

If I remember correctly, there is a discussion on the Firefly DVD commentary track about them trying to figure out just how black they could fade to between scenes before it would trigger the automatic commercial break processing Fox used.

Re:

[fahrbot-bot]

Is looking for a blanking signal that you'll see for a split second when a program goes to commercial break and when it returns and using that to skip the commercials.

If I also remember correctly, MythTV uses several methods to detect commercial breaks. One detecting the brief blank/all-black segment, another trying to detect the channel logo going/coming, which broadcasters now (almost always) display during shows, but *not* during commercial breaks. I think there are other methods, but can't recall them.

Re:

[mea_culpa]

IIRC ReplayTV ACA looked at the data stream in the first 20 scanlines among other things. This contains station IDs, Timecode info, Closed Captioning, etc. Pretty sure all of this data shifts when commercials begin.

Re:

[kriston]

I wouldn't call DiSH the "broadcaster." At best they are a relayer or a common carrier.

How is skipping or jumping ahead not obvious?

[schwit1]

Just like the mute button.

Idea public disclosure

[misnohmer]

You can train a neural network to skip commercials, based on video, audio, timing information (commercials tend to bunch up together), CC, etc, Different training data sets should be used, from users manually using fast forward or skip buttons, to users rewinding after AI identified commercial ("fleet learning" - evidently either misidentified or some really cool commercial not worth skipping), and of course manually labeled data sets too, along with just collections of known advertisements. This processing

The devil is in the details

[zarmanto]

I would assume that Dish is actively seeking prior art on this issue, as we all know that commercial skipping has been around in various forms for many years; DVR software has had a fixed-time skip since the very earliest units came out, and I used to use a script to automatically mark the beginnings and endings of the entire commercial break on my EyeTV recordings, enabling automatic skipping of (and removal of) those commercials, back when the original version of that DVR product still functioned.

The thin

Just like the TiVo case

[kriston]

Sounds just like the TiVo patent infringement case that they also lost after years and years of litigation.