Posted on 06/03/2009 3:56:50 PM PDT by smokingfrog
Dish Network Corp. said Wednesday it won a temporary stay of a potentially costly contempt order issued against it in a long-running patent lawsuit with TiVo Inc.
The Englewood-based satellite broadcaster said a federal appeals court suspended a lower courts contempt ruling that had levied $103 million in new damages against Dish Network and said it had 30 days to disable some functions of millions of digital video recorders used by its subscribers.
We are pleased that the Federal Appeals Court in Washington temporarily stayed the district courts order in the Tivo litigation, said Dish Network in a written statement. Dish Network customers can continue using their DVRs. We believe that we have strong grounds for appeal.
A jury in an east Texas U.S. District Court found in 2006 that DVR software in Dish Network set-top boxes violated patents of Alviso, Calif.-based TiVo covering DVR playback features, like the ability to pause and rewind live programming while the DVR continues to record.
Dish Network reprogrammed millions of its DVRs after the verdict with a workaround it said removed any infringing software. But TiVo claimed Dish Networks software workaround continued the old patent violation and succeeded Tuesday in winning the contempt verdict from the Texas court.
The contempt order upped the previous financial penalty to Dish Network by $103 million. The contempt order listed total damages and interest award due to TiVo at $192.7 million.
That total includes $105 million Dish Network already has paid. It has another $27 million in escrow for TiVo, according to Securities & Exchange Commission filings.
Is it just me or does it seem insane for them to be toying with a case that now is dangling a $190+ million price tag instead of just paying a few hundred thousand or couple million to properly license the technology.
I love my two old RCA UltimateTV receivers on DirectTV. Both have had their hard drives upgraded and can now record 100+ hours.
They have picture-in-picture capability. That was not available on TIVO back in 2002. I don’t know whether it is now.
Charlie Ergen was always playing with fire trying to screw TiVo out of their patent rights. I'm not sure why he did that. Maybe that's just the kind of business man he is.
And the other issue, related to HD. It requires a premium, and includes the local channels. I have not had a single week in the last three months when local channel HD reception was not interrupted. Try time shifting under those circumstances.
I'm just chomping at the bit to join the first class-action lawsuit to demand substantial refunds for non-performance and violation of contract.
When is Dish going to stop screwing with its customers and get CBS? Not that CBS is anything worth watching, other than for NFL games. Also, why does it not carry the MLB channel? Dish flat out lied to me when I was switching from DirecTV about the CBS issue.
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