Dish ordered to pay TiVo $200 million
Dish Network has been ordered to pay about $200 million to TiVo in an ongoing patent dispute over DVR technology.
The lawsuit goes back to 2004, when TiVo sued EchoStar (now a part of the Dish Network) for violating a patent on a "multimedia time-warping system," which involved recording a program on one channel while watching another.
A jury in 2006 found that Dish's digital video recorders infringed upon a patent held by TiVo and ordered it to pay TiVo $73.9 million in damages. That ruling has been upheld in two separate federal appeals. Dish has said its engineers updated its software years ago to design around TiVo's patent and that they removed the features TiVo claims infringe on its patent. But the company hasn't made much progress with that argument. Dish was ordered to pay $103 million plus interest to TiVo in June for being in contempt of court for violating a permanent injunction on selling DVRs with infringing technology.
In the latest salvo, TiVo sued for nearly $1 billion and claimed it was due all of Dish's DVR profits for the five-plus years the dispute has been ongoing, according to Bloomberg. Instead, U.S. District Judge David Folsom in Texarcana, Texas, on Friday awarded TiVo just under $200 million in total, saying the infringement wasn't willful and that Dish has made a good faith effort to design around the TiVo patent.
For their part, both companies are claiming the new ruling as a victory.
TiVo said in a statement, "We are pleased by the court's ruling to impose contempt sanctions of approximately $200 million against EchoStar for its continued violation of a court-ordered permanent injunction...We are confident that this ruling brings us closer to final resolution."
Dish Network, meanwhile, released this equally positive statement: "We are pleased that the district court rejected TiVo's request to award a billion dollars in sanctions and that it found that any violation of the injunction was not willful. While we disagree that any amount of sanctions was warranted, the decision confirms our belief that we designed around TiVo's patent in good faith. We believe that we ultimately will prevail on appeal."
Jennifer Guevin is assistant managing editor of CNET News. She focuses on science and green tech. But she also makes the occasional contribution to CNET's kitchen gadgets blog or writes about the latest Web distraction. Once a week, she takes the mic as host of CNET's Daily News Podcast. E-mail Jennifer. 
We are now on Verizon FiOS which has a Motorola box and it does have that feature.
There are venture law firms buying up patents of inactive companies just to go sue other companies that are using similar technology and moving onwards. You keep to your beloved patents, the rest of the world will continue to advance and the US will fall behind.
WWI Trench warfare: Patents = WWII warfare: Innovations (We have advanced the human race far more from WWII innovations than WWI mentality)
Believe it or not, novelty and creativity are required for a patent. Patents based on obvious concepts and conclusions (at time of patent) can be invalidated.
When I sued Sun for my mother's death, as she was one who died, they cheated me in mediation by getting my attorney to threaten me for the CEO that if I pursued the case to jury trial he'd make me out to be a crazy woman and rip me a new A. I caved, having just had pancreatic cancer surgery I'm sure they didn't think I'd live from. I was one in a million -and survived. When I regained my strength I sue that attorney, Daniel Leipold, for malpractice. He died in his sleep 2 weeks after learning from Tom Swann, Sun's attorney, that I'd retained Andres & Andres. Think he was stressed? The CEO of SUN attempted to obtain a restraining order against me for stating he as manager and SUN were slumlords. Judge Gregory W Jones of Harbor Court, Orange County, California, responded with a loud "NO, she's not dangerous to him or anyone, he's the dangerous one, he killed her mother and she's proven it. Freedom of speech, protected speech, peaceful protest. His attorneys should know better than to file a malicious prosecution against her. She should file a slapp back lawsuit and sue that CEO." My attorney stated the Judge certainly couldn't expect me to carry around a family pix of the CEO -the man I proved killed my mother.
Deborah Calvert, Newport Beach, Calif
former assistant to Buzz Aldrin Ph.D.
What's also interesting is how the Dept of Justice, in pursuit of that injunction, filed charges against employees of a Sun Healthcare Group facility in Encinitas, Calif instead of Sun Healthcare for the deaths we reported to their investigator Joseph Fendrick in 2003. See this article: http://www.thefreelibrary.com/California%20abuse%20case:%20employees%20targeted%20rather%20than%20facility-a0136070745
I feel like Tivo has not had an upgrade since it's introduction! What is it 72 steps to delete a program?
Are they still in DOS or is there a punch card reader in the box? (for those who remember them)
As for the patent to record two shows at once it should be rescinded, after all Cable can't charge you for watching two TV's at once. It's a bogus patent that should never had been issued to begin with. The media outlets should gang up on Tivo and make a better product. Where is Microsoft in all this? Can I not have a DVR in my X box? Is there NO innovation in the USA any more?
Are they still in DOS or is there a punch card reader in the box? (for those who remember them)"
Wow someone is seriously behind the times! You can easily delete any program with Tivo by simply pressing the button marked clear.
"As for the patent to record two shows at once it should be rescinded, after all Cable can't charge you for watching two TV's at once."
Try using Comcast cable! They will charge you for 2 converter box's so yes seing as all the channels in my area are now digital they are charging me twice to watch two tv's at once.
"The media outlets should gang up on Tivo and make a better product. Where is Microsoft in all this? Can I not have a DVR in my X box? Is there NO innovation in the USA any more?"
Eeer Microsoft did have a Dvr sometime ago. I cant remember its name but I know it flopped. Look Tivo invented the technology and they were the first to put it in mass production and quite rightly the patented the technology. Put yourself in there shoes everyone is simply copying there idea and in the good old Us of A we have laws to stop people from copying/stealing other ideas!
Let's see... Before the TIVO, there was the VCR (video cassette recorder). Now those received their signal from either the cable company or the over the air antenna. And they had ONE tuner. Which means while you could record a show, you had to watch that show while it was recording OR not watch anything and what the show later after it had been recorded. And the idea that you could start to watch the start of a show WHILE it was recording was also unheard of.
Now there was a way around this: you could have two or more VCRs (and some people had several of them) and split the input signal so you could watch one show and record another at the same time. But it was NOT an obvious idea to do all that internal to the box.
Until TIVO did it, then everyone was smacking their heads and issuing the almost mandatory "Why didn't I think of that!" statements.
Personally, I feel the US Patent Office is VERY loose when it comes to issuing patents and they issue a TON of obvious patents (especially software patents), but I also strongly feel the TIVO patents ARE valid patents and they WERE earned by TIVO by creating and unique product with features and abilities that no one had seen before in a product..
A decade later when everyone and their dog has a TIVO clone ("cough" "DVR") out it sure does seem like the basic idea was obvious and derivative. But it wasn't until TIVO took that first risky step.
WHAT prior art????
Those VCRs had a SINGLE tuner in them. You could ONLY tune one channel at a time and either watch it or record it.
Now, you might be remembering watching one program on the TV and recording another show on the VCR. I'm sure you did. But it WASN'T a function of the VCR! The untuned signal was spit either before or internal to the VCR and then fed into the tuner in the TV. The VCR could ONLY tune a single program at a time.
No one at the time was sitting around complaining about why VCRs didn't have multiple tuners. If you wanted to record a second show, you bought a second (or third or fourth or...) VCR and wired it up with the rest of you system.
You might want to review the actual technology before you start making invalid claims of "prior art".
I can't believe I am actually defending a patent...
Tivo is not innovative not then and not now. Just capitalist pigs once again taking advantage of an archaic system and killing innovation!
He probably works for Tivo! The idea was not novel then nor is it now and it's not original to Tivo!
For that matter I as have many others used $2 splitters have had the idea long before Tivo! That said I still don't think it should be patented.
Tivo is a piece of crap and there programers are stuck in the 70's It's because of this patent and crapy company that innovation has halted. Lots of better companies could do better for less! Undoubtedly!
I have cablevision I don't need boxes for my cable ready TV's and can watch 5 TV's on different stations and if I wanted more TV's I could put a signal booster in for under ten dollars.
Just because you don't know technology doesn't make Tivo any better!
- by doconn7 September 14, 2009 8:48 AM PDT
- BTW for those interested the clear button does not work!
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(24 Comments)Still 5 or more steps to a permanent delete, not to mention no multiple delete at once!
Such basic functions not available puts the last nail in the coffin for Tivo!