DOW JONES NEWSWIRES Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. (MMI) filed a suit against TiVo Inc. (TIVO) in Texas Friday claiming infringement of its patents for digital video recorders. In the complaint, Motorola says it owns multiple patents related to DVRs, including some from the mid-1990s by a group of engineers whose company was later purchased by a Motorola subsidiary. It claimed TiVo willfully infringed those patents, which were filed more than two years before TiVo's founding. The suit also mentions how TiVo is seeking to enforce its own DVR patents against one of Motorola's clients. In 2009, TiVo filed own DVR-patent case against Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ), which offers DVR services through set-top boxes Motorola supplied. That case is ongoing. Messages left for TiVo representatives seeking comment weren't immediately returned. In a statement, Motorola said it filed the suit to protect its "valuable intellectual property." "We pride ourselves on our strong R&D and intellectual property and will move aggressively to protect that value on behalf of our customers, partners and shareholders," the company said. In the suit, Motorola is seeking "all available remedies" for the alleged infringement and declarations that the TiVo patents are invalid and Motorola set-top boxes do not violate TiVo's intellectual property. Tivo has filed a slew of patent-infringements suits over its DVR technology. It is in the midst of a years-long legal battle with Dish Network Corp. (DISH) and EchoStar Corp. (SATS) against TiVo Inc. (TIVO), and it has accused AT&T Inc. (T) of the same patent oversteps that it claims Verizon made. TiVo shares were down 0.5% at $10.35 after hours, while Motorola's were down 0.6% at $30.43. -By Joan E. Solsman, Dow Jones Newswires; 212-416-2291; joan.solsman@dowjones.com
