Appeals court agrees Dish DVR infringed on TiVo patent

A federal court upheld Thursday an earlier ruling that EchoStar Communications infringed on a digital video recording software patent owned by TiVo.

The Washington, D.C., court of appeals also agreed with the lower court's award of $89.6 million in damages to be paid to TiVo by EchoStar, which recently changed its name to Dish Network.

Dish plans to appeal the award for damages, the company said Thursday.

The court's decision "will have no effect on our current or future customers because EchoStar's engineers have developed and deployed next-generation DVR software to our customers' DVRs," Dish said in an official statement. The software update went out to customers "several months ago," according to Dish spokeswoman Kathie Gonzalez.

TiVo said it is "extremely pleased" with the outcome.

"Today's ruling is confirmation of the value of TiVo's IP portfolio, which is in addition to the other benefits TiVo has to offer. TiVo can now continue to focus on its goal to drive greater distribution in both its stand-alone and mass distribution efforts," TiVo said in an official statement.

Alviso, Calif.-based TiVo initially sued EchoStar back in 2004 for selling its Dish Network DVR, which, like TiVo's DVR, allows TV watchers to record one channel and watch another simultaneously.

[sismoc]

Bogus Patents == BS Awards

The patent system is broke. Nothing TiVo patented was new, unique or non-obvious. But, to a techno-idiot judge or jury it seems like magic and therefore must be patentable.

[gsacks]

Your are right...and wrong

Yes, the patent system is broken. It gives too much protection for too long a time period, and many patents are granted that are too broad and they should be dismissed out-of-hand. But this is not an example of that broken-ness. If there was even a Patent case that should have been upheld, this was it. Tivo DID invent the DVR and the case was not even about DVRs in general, but about specifics in the Tivo software that DISH copied.