Getting Hot.. Hot.. Hot!

It may be heating up outside, but things are also heating up for the folks at Dish Network, especially if you’re an attorney for Dish Network.

On Friday the heat seemed to have been turned up as Dish Network filed a lawsuit against its longtime archenemy Tivo.  This one is suing Tivo because of the fact that Tivo has been publicly stating that Dish Networks new DVR software still infringes on its patent.  Now while that may or may not be true a judge in Texas is still deciding that matter.  I think it is unfair of Tivo to be making such claims until the judge renders his decision.

I have said it before and I will say it again, I would love to see this dispute settled and see both companies work together.  I believe that there is money to be made by Dish Network and Tivo if they worked together to offer Dish Network receivers with Tivos software loaded on them.  Both companies could be making money together and giving their customers the products they want.

The other big lawsuit news last week was from VOOM HD Networks, who filed an amended complaint against Dish Network. You can check out a copy of this amended lawsuit by clicking here.

In this amended lawsuit the folks from Voom list 100 complaints against Dish Network.  Some of these complaints appear to be very valid and make you think, while other complaints seemed like utter nonsense.  Now I am not a lawyer but from what I see here is VOOM’s attorneys seem to be taking the kitchen sink defense against Dish, that means throwing any complaint it can think of at Dish and hopes something sticks.

The strange thing about this complaint is that nowhere in this complaint does VOOM seek to be returned to Dish Networks HD lineup.  That seems very strange to me, is VOOM finally throwing in the towel?  It will be interesting to see if VOOM is alive after June 30^th, which is the reported date that its contract expires with Cablevision the only provider in the United States currently carrying all 15 VOOM HD channels.

I think VOOM could have been a great service if they downsized their offerings from 15 HD channels to 5 – 7 combined channels.  The quality of everything on VOOM was always amazing.  The big problem I saw from VOOM was because it had 15 channels to fill there were many… many repeats; this could have been avoided if VOOM just combined channels and decreased their channel count.  With that said I do miss VOOM.

I look for lots of legal sparks to fly this summer for the Dish Network legal team; I think it’s safe to say that it’s going to be a hot summer.