Patent Law

The following is excerpted from a June 3, 2009 article at the Portland Business Journal by Greg Avery of the Denver Business Journal:

Satellite broadcaster Dish Network Corp. has been found in contempt of a two-year-old patent infringement judgment won by TiVo Inc. and may have to disable key features of millions of the digital video recorders used by Dish Network customers.

The decision by the U.S. District Court for East Texas is a potentially costly loss for Englewood, Colo.-based Dish Network (NASDAQ: DISH) in its five-year-old battle over whether some of its DVR technology violates TiVo patents.

Dish Network issued a statement Tuesday saying it will appeal the contempt verdict and seek a stay on the verdict?s requirement that Dish start disabling features in many of its DVRs within 30 days.

A jury found in 2007 that DVR software in Dish Network set-top boxes violated patents of Alviso, Calif.-based TiVo covering DVR playback features, like the ability to pause and rewind live programming while the DVR continues to record.

Dish Network reprogrammed millions of its DVRs after the 2007 verdict with a ?workaround? it said removed any infringing software. But TiVo claimed Dish Network?s software ?workaround? continued the old patent violation and sought the contempt verdict from the Texas court.

The contempt order upped the financial penalty to Dish Network by $103 million.The contempt order listed total damages and interest award due to TiVo at $192.7 million.

Read the full article here.