Patent Law

The following is posted from Alex Pham's Technology blog published at the Los Angeles Times on March 4, 2010:

TiVo's shares soared more than 53% after the company announced it had won a key ruling in federal court in a long-running patent infringement case against EchoStar's Dish Network.

The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for Eastern District of Texas paves the way for TiVo to potentially claim within a year as much as $300 million in damages and sanctions, a windfall for the financially strapped pioneer of digital videorecorders.

TiVo, in a statement, suggested that even more money could be forthcoming. The lawsuit covers violations up to July 1, 2009. But TiVo maintains that EchoStar's digital videorecorders continued to infringe its patents after July 1, entitling it to additional damages.

"We will also seek further damages and contempt sanctions for the period of continued infringement" after the period covered by the lawsuit, the Alviso, Calif., company said. Depending on how the damages are calculated, this could yield an additional tens of millions of dollars for TiVo.

See the full post here.