AT&T-TiVo Patent Trial Delayed

A jury trial for a patent-infringement suit TiVo (NAS: TIVO) is waging against AT&T (NYS: T) and its U-verse TV platform has been delayed until January.

TiVo, which has filed a separate patent infringement suit against Verizon (NYS: VZ) , had said during its earnings call in August that it expected the trial to begin this fall. The delay could give AT&T and TiVo more time to reach a settlement involving allegations that the DVR the telco deploys in U-verse homes violates patents owned by TiVo.

TiVo reached a $500 million settlement with DISH Network (NAS: DISH) and EchoStar (NAS: SATS) in May after a court ruled that the companies had violated TiVo's DVR patents. Tivo may have more leverage to reach a settlement with AT&T and Verizon, following the DISH rulings.

TiVo CEO Tom Rogers said the DISH settlement increased the value of TiVo's patent portfolio. "There's just no doubt that successful litigation improves the value of a patent portfolio," Rogers said during TiVo's second-quarter earnings call in August. "And so battle-tested patents, we think, improve the value of the patent portfolio more than simply the quantity of patents that might be out there."

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