UPDATE, July 1, 2009: Federal court blocks any injunction against Dish so its customers can continue using their DVRs. See Dish’s statement.

UPDATE, June 3, 10 p.m.: The saga continues. Dish wins a stay of a court injunction to disable DVRs as it appeals. See Reuters story. Also, a followup to this post: TiVo has no beef with Cox, Comcast and DirecTV. But everyone else? 
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Noted: TiVo, which changed the way that most of us watch TV today, won a lawsuit against Dish Network’s EchoStar Communications that could end up disabling “an infringing function on all but about 193,000 digital video recorders,” according to a Reuters story. 

That infringing function covered “DVR playback features, like the ability to pause and rewind live programming while the DVR continues to record,” according to the Denver Business Journal.

EchoStar’s attempt to do a workaround on TiV0′s patent was ruled to be in contempt of court. The federal court in Texas also placed a permanent injunction on affected Dish DVRs, while awarding TiVo $103 million in damages, plus another $89.6 million in patent infringement claims.

Tivo, in a release, said, “We are extremely gratified by the Court’s well reasoned and thorough decision, in which it rejected EchoStar’s attempted workaround claim regarding the TiVo patent, found EchoStar to be in contempt of court and ordered the permanent injunction fully enforced.”

Dish plans to appeal. The company said there will be no immediate impact on customers who have Dish DVRs.

In a statement on its web site, Dish said, ”We are disappointed in the district court’s decision finding us in contempt. DISH Network will appeal, and will file a motion to stay the order with the Federal Circuit. We believe a stay is warranted and that we have strong grounds for appeal. Our engineers spent close to a year designing-around Tivo’s patent and removed the very features that Tivo said infringed at trial.”

The two return to court on June 26 to hear about sanctions against EchoStar.

For more, see the Reuters story, “Court awards Tivo $190 million in EchoStar patent case.” 

More on the web:

• Court Sides with TiVo in Patent Case Against EchoStar (Wall Street Journal)
• TiVo: Judge Rules Against EchoStar In DVR Patent Case (Barron’s)
• Dish Network hit with contempt ruling in patent case (Denver Business Journal)

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