TiVo Awarded $103M from Dish Network
June 3, 2009 by Stephen Kersey
Filed under Business
TiVo, one of the pioneers in the digital video recorder industry, won an important court battle against Dish Network on Tuesday. Due to patent infringement, Dish Network was ordered by a federal judge in Texas to pay TiVo $103 million. Dish Network must also pay TiVo interest through April 2008.
At the time of this controversy, Dish Network was known as EchoStar. As could be expected, TiVo was thrilled with the ruling.
Said TiVo in a press release: “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.”
Dish Network now claims that their digital video recorder technology did not violate any patents. However, Judge David Folsom wholeheartedly disagreed.
“EchoStar has gained millions of customers since this court’s injunction was issued,” said Folsom, “customers that are now potentially unreachable by TiVo.”
Tivo (Image: Flickr)
I just don’t understand… every television provider offers DVR, why is dish singled out for offering dvr’s??? Dish built a much better DVR than tivpo ever could and they are mad about it, get over it!!! Tivo is yesterday, why would anyone get a separate box with separate fee when you get it with cable or satellite?