TiVo Wins Permanent Injunction Against EchoStar

ZenFodderBoy writes "It's official! Judge Folsom entered his ruling today granting TiVo nearly $90 million in damages, plus granting a permanent injunction calling for the disabling of nearly all of EchoStar's DVRs within the next 30 days. EchoStar's motion to stay the injunction pending appeal was denied. Additionally, the judge reserves the right to grant additional damages in the future, so treble damages may still be coming. Excellent news for TiVo!"

Comments

More informative Reuters article

[sessamoid]

EchoStar must disable DVRs, judge rules

Re:this isn't that bad...

[muindaur]

No they don't, the whole purpose of patent law allows for a developing party to be the only one allowed to make a certain innovatinve product so they can recover development costs and make a profit off of the idea. Then after a certain period of time they cannot receive funds from companies that wish to develop a product that does the same thing.

This helps encourage innovation by protecting the innovators from competition that could prevent them from recovering development costs. So in the end it does help the consumer because while at first only a few may be able pay for the cost of the product it shows to other companies that it is a product many more would be willing to buy.

Re:Quick ?

[tonyquan]

DirecTV is actually a TiVo licensee. Up until recently, all DirecTV DVRs actually ran TiVo software. Three months ago, TiVo signed a deal with DirecTV to extend the licensing arrangement until 2009. TiVo will continue to service the ~2 million DirecTV DVRs based on TiVo software, and both parties specifically agreed not to sue each other over patents as happened with Dish Network/Echostar.

http://www.tivo.com/cms_static/press_85.html

DISABLE YOUR AUTOMATIC UPDATES

[speedlaw]

All Echostar users should go to the setup menu now and "disable automatic updates". It's a pity that updates, which used to mean improvements, can now mean less functionality. Go to your box(es) now, and disable all update check boxes !

Re:DISABLE YOUR AUTOMATIC UPDATES

[RevDobbs]

What good is that going to do when they stop sending out the show listings?

Re:/. is an editorial factory

[MyNameIsEarl]

DirecTV hasn't provided TiVo's to customers for most of this year, they have their own inhouse brand DVR now the R15. They still support their customer with the TiVo's however.

Re:Win for Tivo - Lose for Customers

[dwandy]

No such luck. ...

RESIDENTIAL CUSTOMER AGREEMENT

C. DISH Network reserves the rights to alter software, features and/or functionality in your DISH Network receivers,

D. DISH Network's PVR/DVR Products allow you to record programming in digital format. ...[snip]... DISH Network does not guarantee access to or recording of any particular programming. ...[snip]... DISH Network may, in its sole discretion, add, change or remove features of its PVR/DVR Products and, upon notice to you, introduce or change fees for the use of PVR/DVR Product features. DISH Network will notify you of any change that is within its reasonable control....[snip]...

I guess making it so it doesn't record anything is just a change of "features"... it's still a clock, right?

Re:A stupid judgment that penalises customers...

[acklenx]

The true purpose of patents is in fact, to spur innovation... not to build monopolies.

While true that the purpose is innovation, they very single and solitary way that patents foster such innovation is through [time] limited monopolies on that specific innovation. And I have no problem with that as long as what you've been awarded patent is worthy (truly novel and new).

I think a more equitable judgement ought to be along the lines... like, Echostar to pay TiVo the requisite license money...

This can still happen. And it's very likely to happen as well, but under the free market principal of "Tivo owns the rights and can set their price, others including Echostar can pay that price if they think it's worth it. If Echostar doesn't agree to that price, so be it... unless Tivo decides that it would rather lower the price to keep from losing easy money...". This, I believe, is the way the system was designed to work. (I just don't know that Tivo should have the patent in the first place).

What if a patent violation happened in a medicinal drug? Patients must vomit already ingested medicines and die?

No, and you don't have to unwatch any shows that you watched delayed either. You just can't continue to do so (no more refills on you Rx).

Re:This won't be good for tivo in the long run

[Dun Malg]

AFAIK no one reads patents to advance their own tech ... creating a product that infringes on someone else's patent, where they can show that you read their patent results in a greater reward (penalty) from the judge... so the lawyers tell the engineers to explicitly not read existing patents when they build something new (to them)...

No, you're confusing copyright with patents, I think. For example, Compaq engineers working to black-box reverse engineer the IBM-PC BIOS were specifically not permitted to see the IBM microcode. This ensured that no copying happened, even inadvertently. This is an iron-clad defense against a charge of copyright infringement. If you've never even seen it, it's impossible for you to make a copy. With patents, you need to see what's patented when designing a competing product in order to implement a non-infringing product. There does not exist an "ignorance" mitigation for patent infringement.