Rovi Sues Hulu For Program Guide Patent Infringement

Hulu are being sued for a patent infringement by program guide vendor Rovi. The lawsuit was filed in US District of Delaware Court on Thursday and is because of three patents related to online TV program guides and search products. The lawsuit seeks for an unspecified damages for the said infringement.

Rovi who used to be known as Gemstar-TV Guide International Inc, contends that Los Angeles based Hulu is using protected technology for electronic programming guides, according to a complaint filed in the court.

“Rovi invests significant resources” in the development of its guides and related inventions for digital video streaming technologies, the Santa Clara based company said in court papers.

Rovi has sued Toshiba over three program guide patents towards the end of last year. Earlier this year, Toshiba not only agreed to a license, but will use Rovi’s TotalGuide interactive programming guide in its TV sets.

A long running patent infringement suit against Virgin Media has ended in a small victory, as Virgin was found guilty, but the patents in question were ruled invalid.

Hulu’s not the only online media company that Rovi has taken to court recently. In January, it sued Amazon, and Amazon’s IMDb property over five program guide patents.

We can more than likely expect there to be more of these lawsuits, as Rovi claims more than 1,100 patents related to program guides, which it has licensed to a number of distributors and consumer electronics manufacturers such as Apple, Cisco, Comcast, DirecTV, Microsoft, Samsung, Sony, Time Warner and Verizon.

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