Fergie's Tech Blog

TiVo Seeks to Block EchoStar DVR Service

An AP newswire article, via Yahoo! News, reports that:

The ongoing patent dispute between TiVo Inc. and EchoStar Communications Corp. flared up again this week as TiVo filed an injunction seeking to ban EchoStar from making or selling its digital video recorder product.

Meanwhile, EchoStar issued a statement saying the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office rejected some of TiVo's patent claims as invalid.

The actions come after a federal jury in April determined that EchoStar willfully infringed TiVo's "time-warp" patent, which controls the way a DVR simultaneously records one program while playing back another. Jurors awarded Alviso, Calif.-based TiVo about $74 million, but because the infringement was seen as willful, the final award could jump to triple that amount. EchoStar appealed the decision soon afterwards.

posted by Fergie @ 5/24/2006 09:58:00 AM