DISH tries to validate Patent Workaround

June 2, 2008
Intellectual Property News and Interesting Facts

For a number of years, DISH Network has been living under a dark patent infringement cloud. Currently, the American satellite TV provider owes TiVo over $70 million for infringing on the DVR maker’s patents for a “multimedia time warping system,” and it faces the possibility that it will have to kill the DVR functionality of a number of its customers’ set-top boxes.

DISH says it has come up with a non-infringing workaround for TiVo’s patents, and late last week it filed a new lawsuit in Delaware seeking to have said workaround declared valid and non-infringing.

TiVo originally sued DISH in 2004, and in 2006, a jury found it and its corporate parent, Echostar, liable for patent infringement.

A few months later, a federal judge issued an injunction against the sale and continued operation of DISH Network DVRs, but stayed it pending DISH’s appeals