Rovi to Appeal English High Court Ruling in EPG Patent Litigation against Virgin Media

As [itvt] reported earlier this week, an EPG-related patent-infringement lawsuit, filed by the then-Gemstar-TV Guide (which was subsequently acquired by Macrovision, which subsequently changed its name to Rovi) and its subsidiaries, StarSight Telecast and United Video Properties, against UK cable operator, Virgin Media, and its subsidiary, Virgin Media Payments, back in January, 2008, was last week decided in Virgin Media's favor by the English High Court. Rovi--which claims to have over 200 issued and pending patents covering the UK, had alleged that Virgin Media was infringing upon three of its European patents--EP (UK) 0969662, EP (UK) 1377049, and EP (UK) 1613066--which cover such areas as techniques for providing EPG's and for handling recordings from EPG's (note: abstracts and some diagrams for the patents can be found in an article published on itvt.com, June 7th). While the court found that Virgin Media had indeed infringed upon the patents, it decided that the patents themselves were invalid.

Rovi on Monday issued a statement--attributed to its SVP of worldwide patent licensing, Samir Armaly--making clear that it plans to appeal the court's decision: "While we are pleased that the court found all of the patents to be infringed by Virgin, we strongly disagree with the court's ruling on the validity issues, and intend to appeal the decision," the statement read. "We also intend to continue to pursue Virgin and other unlicensed companies for their infringement of our intellectual property, to join the numerous companies who have already taken licenses to our patents issued throughout the world."