New Development in TiVo/DISH Network Battle

ALVISO/ENGLEWOOD: TiVo has secured another victory in its long-running legal dispute with DISH Network, with a federal appeals court, in a 7-5 vote, upholding a previous ruling that the company violated TiVo’s time-warp technology patent.

The suit dates back to 2004 when TiVo accused the platform of using its patented "time-warp" technology in its line of DVRs. In 2006, TiVo was awarded $73.9 million in damages for patent violation. That was later increased to $200 million after DISH failed to comply with an injunction on its DVRs. DISH appealed, asking for an en banc ruling of 12 judges.

"We are pleased that the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit sitting en banc affirmed the district court’s finding of contempt and award of sanctions against EchoStar for failing to comply with the district court’s injunction," TiVo said in a statement. "This marks the second time that the district court’s contempt ruling has been upheld by the Court of Appeals. We look forward to the permanent injunction against EchoStar and Dish Network finally being enforced with respect to the DVRs they must now disable. This ruling also paves the way for TiVo to receive substantial damages and contempt sanctions regarding the DVRs that EchoStar and Dish Network failed to disable. With respect to the remand of the infringement provision of the District’s Courts order, we intend to pursue the most rapid path to resolution. We will continue our efforts to protect our intellectual property from further infringement by EchoStar and DISH Network."

DISH says it is taking its appeal to the United States Supreme Court and will seek a stay of the injunction while doing so. "We also will be making a motion to dissolve the injunction based on Tivo’s recent representations to the Patent and Trademark Office substantially limiting the scope of the claims at issue in this case."

Existing DISH customers "are not immediately impacted by these recent developments," the company says. "The disablement ruling covers only certain older generation MPEG2 DVRs. We have already upgraded many of these customers and, if we are unsuccessful in obtaining a stay, we will work as quickly as possible to upgrade the remaining customers to our current generation DVRs, as these are not at issue in the ruling.”