Echostar injunction stayed pending outcome of appeals process
By Evan Blass 
posted Oct 4th 2006 1:35PM
posted Oct 4th 2006 1:35PM
Even though its customers were the ones getting down at nationwide TiVo House Parties this past weekend, it was the company itself that woke up with a nasty hangover. In the latest development surrounding the most drawn-out patent dispute the consumer electronics industry has seen since that RIM / NTP debacle, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has just granted DISH-parent Echostar a temporary stay on an injunction that would have shut down its DVR service and halted sales of related hardware. You probably remember that TiVo won a $74 million jury verdict in this case back in April, when the Texas panel apparently agreed with the DVR pioneer that Echostar (who also had access to an early TiVo prototype box) had violated its so-called "Time Warp" patent. After much legal posturing, the award was upped to $90 million and the satellite TV provider was given 30 days to disable the time-shifting functionality on its STBs; luckily for DISH customers, the injunction was granted a temporary stay while the merits of Echostar's appeals case were weighed. Well the court has finally ruled that Echostar does indeed have a solid case, and that the company can therefore continue offering DVR services until its appeals have been exhausted. Sounds like bad news for TiVo, until you notice a snippet of Echostar's followup press release which reads, "We also continue to work on modifications to our new DVRs, and to our DVRs in the field, intended to avoid future alleged infringement." If Echostar is so confident in its lack of culpability here, why make changes to its supposedly non-infringing devices? Stay tuned, folks, as this one's not over yet -- not by a long shot.[Via Zatz Not Funny]
So is Dish Network going to pull our boxes when/if they lose to TiVo or are they just going to cripple our boxes so we can't record anymore or what? I like my dvr and really can't afford a TiVo, which is why I got the Dish Network. They really should make some kind of deal to replace our DVR's with a TiVo.
Echostar should have been using TiVos to begin with like DirecTV did. But they wanted to save a few bucks by stealing TiVo's technology. I think they should pay-up.
It seems Wall Street thinks this is bad news: TiVo is down 13% today, on about 5x the average volume.
LONG LIVE ECHOSTAR!!
Take that TiVo. I have DISH and love my DVR and Tivo better do some more innovating and just get over this whole thing before they find themselves trying to catch up.
I have been a loyal customer of Dish network for over 8 years and had several different receivers. I now have 2 dvrs and love them. Think of them as vcr on steroids. Trying to copywrite the basic dvr functionally is like Apple trying to copywrite "POD" and anything connected with it.
Weather Dish strole Tivo tech is kind of a mute point now, the "cat is out the bag", so to speak. Tivo neeeds to reinvent itselve, come up with new or better programing for the boxes it has in the wild now, I see they have the series 3, which I belive are HD. Dish had HD boxes for several years now, Maybe Dish should sue Tivo for their HD boxes...
As for proving what dish did several years ago, the programs have been rewritten and edited so many times since then It's be hard to tell what was the orginial code and where it came from,
Both Dish and Tivo are making toms of money of their respective boxes, and will continue to until the DRM cripples them,
Come on Call it a draw and let it go and invoate ,, In the end the loser will be both the customers of both dish network and tivo , they will have either two cripples choices or one cripples choice, or worst yet none at all, because the big guys can play nice together. Tivo, Don't be a Microsoft, and not play nice with the other players.
long live Dishnetwork and pvrs.. and yes long live tivo too...