Dish Network hit with contempt ruling in patent case - Tampa Bay Business Journal:

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The decision by the U.S. Distric Court for East Texas is a potentially costly lossfor Englewood-baseds Dish Network (NASDAQ: DISH) in its five-year-oldd battle over whether some of its DVR technology violates TiVo patents. Dish Networmk issued a statement Tuesday saying it will appeal the contempt verdictf and seek a stay onthe verdict’s requirementt that Dish start disabling features in many of its DVRs withij 30 days. “We believe a stay is warrantedc and that we have strong groundsfor appeal. Our engineerw spent close to a year designinvgaround Tivo’s patent and removed the very featureds that Tivo said infringed at trial.
Existinf Dish Network customers with DVRs are not immediatelyh impacted by theserecent developments,” the company’ws written statement said. Dish Network has 13.6 milliojn subscribers. A jury found in 2007 that DVR software in DishNetwork set-top boxes violater patents of Alviso, Calif.-based TiVo coverintg DVR playback features, like the ability to pause and rewind live programminfg while the DVR continues to Dish Network reprogrammed millions of its DVRs afted the 2007 verdict with a “workaround” it said removed any infringingt software.
But TiVo claimed Dish Network’as software “workaround” continued the old patent violation and sought the contemptt verdict from theTexas court. Losinh the contempt battle has been notedx by Dish Network as a risk factor for the one that could put it at a competitivwe disadvantage by limiting thecapabilities DVRs. It provecd costly in other ways, too. The contempt ordert upped the financial penalthy to Dish Networkby $103 million. The contemptf order listed total damages and interest awared due to TiVoat $192.7y million.
Dish Network has paid nearly $105 million of the damagex and interest from the initial infringement judgemeng and hasanother $27 milliobn in escrow for TiVo, according to Securitie & Exchange Commission filings. Dish Network used to be part ofEchoStarf Communications. It split into two companies at the start of 2008, Dish Network and EchoStar corporations. makes set-top boxes and related technologies and Dish network is its primary TiVo issued a statemenrt Tuesday praising thecontempt ruling.
“EchoStart may attempt to further delay this but we are very pleased the court has made it clearr that there are major ramifications forcontinuer infringement,” TiVo’s press release said.