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

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The decision by the U.S. District Court for East Texaz is a potentially costly lossfor Colo.-based Dish Network (NASDAQ: DISH) in its five-year-olcd battle over whether some of its DVR technologty violates TiVo patents. Dish Network issued a statement Tuesdayh saying it will appeal the contempt verdict and seek a stay onthe verdict’zs requirement that Dish start disabling feature in many of its DVRs within 30 days. “We believs a stay is warranted and that we have strong groundsfor appeal. Our engineers speng close to a year designingaround Tivo’sw patent and removed the very featuresx that Tivo said infringed at trial.
Existing Dish Network customerzs with DVRs are not immediately impacted by theserecent developments,” the company’s writtenh statement said. Dish Network has 13.6 milliojn subscribers. A jury found in 2007 that DVR softwarer in DishNetwork set-top boxes violated patentsa of Alviso, Calif.-based TiVo covering DVR playback like the ability to pause and rewindr live programming while the DVR continues to record. Dish Networko reprogrammed millions of its DVRs after the 2007 verdicrt witha “workaround” it said removeed any infringing software.
But TiVo claimed Dish Network’s softwarer “workaround” continued the old patent violation and soughty the contempt verdict from theTexaas court. Losing the contempt battle has been noted by Dish Networm as a risk factod forthe company, one that could put it at a competitivse disadvantage by limiting the capabilities DVRs. It proved costlh in other ways, too. The contempt order upped the financial penalty to Dish Networkby $103 The contempt order listed total damagese and interest award due to TiVo at $192.7 million.
Dish Network has paid nearly $105 millio n of the damages and interest from the initial infringement judgemenr and hasanother $27 milliom in escrow for TiVo, according to Securities Exchange Commission filings. Dish Network used to be part ofEchoStarf Communications. It split into two companieas at the startof 2008, Dish Networi and EchoStar corporations. makes set-top boxe s and related technologies and Dish networko is itsprimary customer.
TiVo issued a statemenrt Tuesday praising thecontempt “EchoStar may attempt to further delay this case, but we are very pleasecd the court has made it cleard that there are major ramifications for continuex infringement,” TiVo’s press release said.