U.S. Court Of Appeals Stays Dish Ruling In TiVo Case
Dish, EchoStar Claim To Have 'Strong Grounds for Appeal'
By Todd Spangler -- Multichannel News, 6/3/2009 6:03:02 PM
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit Wednesday granted Dish Network's request to temporarily stay a district court ruling that would have required the satellite TV operator to disable some 4 million DVRs within 30 days.
In a statement Dish and EchoStar said: "We are pleased that the Federal Appeals Court in Washington temporarily stayed the district court's order in the TiVo litigation. Dish Network customers can continue using their DVRs. We believe that we have strong grounds for appeal."
TiVo shares Wednesday spiked 53% to hit a five-year high after the U.S District Court for the Eastern District of Texas ruled that Dish's claimed workaround infringed TiVo's patent and violated a previous court injunction to stop using the DVR technology. The court ordered Dish to pay TiVo an additional $103 million plus interest for violating an order to stop using TiVo's Time Warp patent.
TiVo issued the following statement Wednesday evening: "We are very pleased with the recent decision by the United States District Court, Eastern District of Texas, to fully enforce a permanent injunction in our patent case against EchoStar in addition to rejecting EchoStar's alleged workaround claim regarding the TiVo patent and finding EchoStar to be in contempt of the Court's permanent injunction.
"The U.S. Court of Appeals temporarily stayed the District Court's ruling pending the Court's consideration of TiVo's response to EchoStar's motion for stay pending appeal," the statement continued. "We are confident the U.S. Court of Appeals will again uphold the District Court ruling and not permit EchoStar to further delay this case once it has an opportunity to consider TiVo's response and EchoStar's motion on the issue of the stay."
