TiVo Settle DVR Rights Lawsuit With Dish Network
In 1999, TiVo created a product that would revolutionise the way that users would be able to watch TV shows. In 2011, however, an out-of-court settlement might have ended up creating an unwanted precedent for other companies producing DVR’s (digital video recorders).
A long-running legal battle between TiVo and The Dish Network (a satellite TV provider owned by EchoStar) has been ongoing for the last 7 years, with the key allegations made by TiVo being that EchoStar had infringed the rights of TiVo’s patents over various DVR devices and features.
TiVo yesterday announced that the lawsuit has been settled with the Dish Network, with parent company EchoStar being fined to the tune of $500 million, of which $300m will be paid immediately, while the rest will be handed over in six $33.3m installments at a later date. This is a far cry from a 2009 ruling on the case which saw the court order EchoStar to pay $103.1m, but the losing party decided to re-open the case in an effort to clarify the law and clear their name, though it seems as if they failed by a long shot to achieve the latter.
The decision for EchoStar to settle came after a Federal Circuit Court ruling in April that percieved that some features on the Dish Network’s set-top boxes had been directly infringing TiVo’s exclusive patents without the use of a paid license to Tivo. A silver lining for the EchoStar under the terms of the settlement is that TiVo gave the neccessary required licences to The Dish Network, meaning that they are now able to use the features that were under scrutiny.
TiVo CEO Tom Rogers stated of the legal victory: ”The compensation from this settlement, including the resulting reduction in legal expenditures, puts TiVo in an enviable financial and strategic position.”
Dish Network also announced that they were ”pleased to put this litigation behind us.”
The legal battle could also be considered as a warning shot to other providers of DVR technology in America (and possibly also around the world), as anyone using TiVo technology without licensed consent could be made to fork out big-time…
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