A federal appeals court decision that would order DISH Network and parent company EchoStar to shut down DVRs due to their infringement upon TiVo patents, was upheld in a ruling today.
DISH Network subscribers, before you freak out, you should know that this only applies to some older models, so there’s a good chance it won’t affect you at all. While DISH intends to fight this further, and if necessary, it also says it will work to replace the older models, with new non-infringing models.
DISH released the following statement:
“DISH Network and EchoStar are pleased that the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals has unanimously vacated the district court’s contempt ruling regarding our software design around. We are disappointed, however, that the Federal Circuit in a 7-5 split decision has affirmed the district court’s ruling on the disablement question. We intend to seek review of that part of the decision by the United States Supreme Court and seek a stay of the injunction while doing so. We also will be making a motion to dissolve the injunction based on TiVo’s recent representations to the Patent and Trademark Office substantially limiting the scope of the claims at issue in this case. Existing DISH Network customers with DVRs are not immediately impacted by these recent developments. The disablement ruling covers only certain older generation MPEG2 DVRs. We have already upgraded many of these customers and, if we are unsuccessful in obtaining a stay, we will work as quickly as possible to upgrade the remaining customers to our current generation DVRs, as these are not at issue in the ruling.”
TiVo also offered a statement:
“We are pleased that the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit sitting en banc affirmed the district court’s finding of contempt and award of sanctions against EchoStar for failing to comply with the district court’s injunction. This marks the second time that the district court’s contempt ruling has been upheld by the Court of Appeals. We look forward to the permanent injunction against EchoStar and Dish Network finally being enforced with respect to the DVRs they must now disable. This ruling also paves the way for TiVo to receive substantial damages and contempt sanctions regarding the DVRs that EchoStar and Dish Network failed to disable. With respect to the remand of the infringement provision of the District’s Courts order, we intend to pursue the most rapid path to resolution. We will continue our efforts to protect our intellectual property from further infringement by EchoStar and Dish Network.”
TiVo investors seem to be pleased. At the time of this writing, TiVo stock is up 35.84% in afternoon trading. DISH investors, not so much: -0.80%.
