Digital Media

Less than 24 hours after a federal judge found EchoStar in contempt in its long-running patent dispute with TiVo, another judge issued a temporary stay Wednesday, according to EchoStar.

"We are pleased that the Federal Appeals Court in Washington temporarily stayed the district court's order in the TiVo litigation. Dish Network customers can continue using their DVRs. We believe that we have strong grounds for appeal," the company said in a statement.

The temporary stay drags out even further a legal contest that is now five years old. It seemed like it had come close to reaching its conclusion on Tuesday evening when U.S. District Judge David Folsom found EchoStar, which is now part of Dish Network, in contempt of court for violating a permanent injunction by reprogramming millions of DVRs with a new "workaround." He then ordered EchoStar to pay $103 million to TiVo.

"The harm caused to TiVo by EchoStar's contempt is substantial," Folsom wrote. "EchoStar has gained millions of customers since this court's injunction was issued, customers that are now potentially unreachable by TiVo."

TiVo first sued EchoStar in 2004 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 Network's DVRs infringed upon a patent held by TiVo and ordered it to pay TiVo $73.9 million in damages. A federal appeals court upheld the ruling in January 2008, as did a second U.S. appeals court in April 2008.

CNET News' Steven Musil contributed to this report.

A federal court has awarded TiVo $103 million plus interest in its long-running patent dispute with EchoStar Communications and ordered EchoStar to disable infringing features found on its subscribers' digital video recorders.

U.S. District Judge David Folsom on Tuesday also found EchoStar, which is now part of Dish Network, in contempt of court for violating a permanent injunction by reprogramming millions of DVRs with a new "workaround."

"The harm caused to TiVo by EchoStar's contempt is substantial," Folsom wrote. "EchoStar has gained millions of customers since this court's injunction was issued, customers that are now potentially unreachable by TiVo."

Englewood, Colo.-based Dish, which has roughly 13.6 million subscribers, said in a statement it would appeal the contempt ruling and file a motion to stay an order that requires it to disable the disputed DVR features within 30 days.

"Our engineers spent close to a year designing around TiVo's patent and removed the very features that TiVo said infringed at trial," the company said. "Existing Dish Network customers with DVRs are not immediately impacted by these recent developments."

The Alviso, Calif.-based maker of set-top boxes applauded the decision.

"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. "EchoStar may attempt to further delay this case but we are very pleased the court has made it clear that there are major ramifications for continued infringement."

In after-hours trading, shares of TiVo rose $2.53, or 36 percent, to $9.51, while shares of Dish fell $1.19, or 6.9 percent, to $16.05.

TiVo first sued EchoStar in 2004 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 Network's DVRs infringed upon a patent held by TiVo and ordered it to pay TiVo $73.9 million in damages. A federal appeals court upheld the ruling in January 2008, as did a second U.S. appeals court in April 2008.

Google believes the TV remote control is the next mouse, at least when it comes to measuring the fickle behavior of TV viewers and Web surfers regarding advertising.

Google TV Ads has been a formal project for a little over a year, and the company released new data Thursday showing how it's trying to help television advertisers quantify the impact of a good TV ad versus a bad one. Google has been quietly measuring the viewing habits of Dish Network customers, including how likely they are to watch all the way through a compelling, relevant ad or click away in disgust from the 10,000th airing of "Mini Sirloin Burgers."

This is a logical next step for Google's advertising brawn: television advertising metrics, and how the company can apply its expertise in Internet advertising to the small screen. The metric they focused on Thursday is called "% Initial Audience Retained," or the percentage of people who watch a given ad all the way through.

Google found that ads that had previously retained viewer interest were likely to do so in the future, which doesn't explain Toyota's Saved By Zero campaign.

(Credit: Google)

It may seem kind of obvious, but Google crunched the numbers to find out that past "stickiness," or %IAR, can predict future stickiness. That is, if over a certain period of time the numbers showed that more people were likely to stick around for an entire ad, future audiences will also be likely to stick around for that ad.

One thing this research doesn't seem to address is ad saturation. People may have initially responded to Toyota's "Saved By Zero," Subway's "Five-Dollar Footlong," or the ubiquitous (on the West Coast, at least) "Mini Sirloin Burgers" from Jack in the Box, but after you've seen that ad for the 50th time in the last three hours, why stick around?

But it seems the data gathered could be used to determine just that: when a successful TV ad campaign has reached the point of diminishing returns, or even outright backlash. Toyota's incessant campaign during last year's NFL season drove viewers up the wall, and might have hurt the company's image among a powerful demographic.

The federal government and four states are suing satellite television provider Dish Network for violating laws regarding the national Do Not Call registry.

The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday said Dish Network has been calling consumers on the Do Not Call list, either directly or through marketing dealers working on its behalf, to promote its services since 2003.

The agency also said the company's "robocalls," or automated messages, are in violation of the federal Telemarketing Sales Rule. The agency's complaint was filed jointly with attorneys general from California, Illinois, Ohio, and North Carolina.

"Because a few bad actors still don't get it, we want to make it crystal-clear," Eileen Harrington, acting director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a statement. "If you call consumers whose numbers are on the Do Not Call registry, you're breaking the law."

The government is seeking a permanent injunction against Dish Network, prohibiting it from violating robocall and Do Not Call restrictions, and requiring that it monitor the marketing dealers it works with to prevent future violations. It is also seeking monetary civil penalties for every Telemarketing Sales Rule violation.

Dish Network said it has not violated the law and should not be held responsible for Do Not Call violations made by other companies.

"An independent audit demonstrates that Dish Network is in compliance with Do Not Call laws, has proper controls in place, and is well within the safe-harbor provisions of the law," the company said in a statement. "We also believe that the FTC is equating merely doing business with an independent retailer to 'causing,' or 'assisting and facilitating,' violations by that retailer, which creates a strict liability standard that does not exist in the law and was not intended by Congress."

The government is also filing complaints against two of the marketing dealers with which Dish works, Vision Quest and New Edge Satellite, for allegedly calling consumers on the Do Not Call list.

The FTC filed similar complaints against two other Dish Network partners in 2008--Planet Earth Satellite and Star Satellite. Those charges were settled, with the companies paying a total of $95,000 in penalties.