James Delahunty
11 Apr 2008 21:11
A federal appeals court stated on Friday that it will not re-examine a previous ruling made in favor of TiVo Inc. in a patent dispute with Dish Network Corp. TiVo was awarded $94 million to be paid by Dish Network for patent infringement offenses. Today's decision brings TiVo closer to the payout and also provides it leverage to tout in negotiations with other providers who want to use DVR technology.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld a ruling from a lower court that found DVRs distributed by Dish (formerly Echostar) violated a TiVo patent at a software level, while it did overturn the previous ruling that Dish DVRs infringed TiVo's patent at the hardware level.
Dish Network is now preparing to file an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court while TiVo praised today's court decision in a statement. "Today's ruling brings us closer to resolution of EchoStar's infringement and reconfirms the strength of TiVo's Time Warp patent," the statement said.
Dish Network re-assured its customers that the ruling does not affect them because the company had developed and distributed new DVR software.