TiVo has pulled off another victory in its long-running patent battle with EchoStar: a federal appeals court has upheld the $200 million contempt judgement levied against EchoStar back in 2009. The ruling means EchoStar is on the hook to pay about $300 million to TiVo for infringing on the company’s famous “time-warp” patent for time-shifting recorded television broadcasts—that’s $200 million in contempt penalties, plus $103 million from earlier in 2009 after a judge rejected EchoStar’s proposed “work-around” for TiVo technology and ruled the company was liable for infringement through mid-2009.
“We are pleased that the [court] fully affirmed the district court’s finding of contempt against EchoStar, including both the disablement and infringement provisions,” TiVo said in a statement. “We will also seek further damages and contempt sanctions for the period of continued infringement thereafter. We will continue our efforts to protect our intellectual property from further infringement.”
EchoStar has, of course, appealed every ruling against it—with one iteration of this case even going to the Supreme Court—and has vowed to continue the appeal process as well as introduce yet another effort to work around TiVo’s technology:
“We are disappointed in the Federal Circuit’s split decision,” Dish Network (the parent company of EchoStar, wrote in a statement. “We will be seeking en banc review by the full Federal Circuit. We also will be proposing a new design-around to the district court for approval.”
EchoStar has been working to try to get TiVo’s valuable “time-warp” patent invalidated; however, in the protracted patent battle EchoStar hasn’t even been able to chalk up many minor victories, with each decision seeming to increase the amount of money EchoStar may eventually have to pay TiVo for infringement. In the meantime, TiVo hasn’t been letting the time warp patent sit idle: in August of 2009 it sued AT&T and Verizon for violating three of its DVR patents.
