Court Orders EchoStar to Pay TiVo $103M in Patent Case

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on June 3, 2009 - 8:58am.

Alviso, Calif. - TiVo (NASD: TIVO) announced on Wednesday that a federal court has ordered DISH Network operator EchoStar (NASD: DISH) to pay the company $103 million plus interest in damages for infringing on TiVo's digital video recorder patent. TiVo first sued EchoStar in 2004 for patent infringement; a jury found in TiVo's favor in 2006, and that ruling was upheld twice by federal appellate courts.

After the first ruling, EchoStar said its engineers "spent close to a year designing-around TiVo's patent and removed the very features that TiVo said infringed at trial."

The court ruled this week that EchoStar's workaround constituted contempt of court on its preliminary injunction against infringing TiVo's patent.

"We are extremely gratified by the Court's well reasoned and thorough decision, in which it rejected EchoStar's attempted workaround claim regarding the TiVo patent, found EchoStar to be in contempt of court and ordered the permanent injunction fully enforced," TiVo said in a statement.

"We are disappointed in the district court's decision finding us in contempt. DISH Network will appeal, and will file a motion to stay the order with the Federal Circuit," EchoStar said in a statement.

"We believe a stay is warranted and that we have strong grounds for appeal...Existing DISH Network customers with DVRs are not immediately impacted by these recent developments.

Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/jdedx (TiVo statement)

http://snipurl.com/jdec9 (EchoStar statement)

http://snipurl.com/jdehn (DMW previous coverage)