Janney Montgomery Scott analyst Tony Wible today opines that a court date coming up in a May in a patent suit brought by TiVo (TIVO) against Google (GOOG) gives the former plenty of runway to seek a favorable settlement with the search giant, and could even conceivably prompt a Google to try and buy TiVo, though he’s not explicitly predicting that.

TiVo in April of last year countersued the former Motorola Mobility, now owned by Google, after Moto filed a complaint against TiVo with its own claims of infringement. Those suits are now Google’s headache, and TiVo has said Google owes it billions of dollars because of infringing digital video recorder set-top devices produced by the “Home” division of Motorola.

In advance of the May court date, Wible, who has a Buy rating on TiVo shares and a $15 “fair value” estimate, writes today that the “claims construction for TIVO’s upcoming litigation against Motorola/GOOG is in for the five patents involved and heavily favors TIVO, which prevailed in 81% of the claims (5% went in favor of Motorola and 14% were split).”

As a consequence, he writes, “These interpretations will make it much more difficult for Motorola to prevail in court as the prior precedent and the broader interpretations are harder to circumvent. Infringement on any one item creates a problem for Motorola.”

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Read also:

Will Google Buy TiVo? (Forbes)

Will TiVo See A Blockbuster Resolution To Its Patent Case Against Google? (Deadline.com)

Google to buy TiVo? (Advanced Television)

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