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Injunction Against EchoStar Blocked

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the judge-vs-judge dept.

bestinshow writes "ExtremeTech has the news that a judge has blocked the injunction against Echostar Communications selling its PVRs." From the article: "The ruling was the latest in an ongoing battle between TiVo, one of earliest companies to design personal video recorders, now called digital video recorders or DVRS. 'As a result of the stay EchoStar can continue to sell, and provide to consumers, all of its digital video recorder models,' EchoStar added. 'We continue to believe the Texas decision was wrong, and should be reversed on appeal. We also continue to work on modifications to our new DVRs, and to our DVRs in the field, intended to avoid future alleged infringement.'"

4 of 109 comments (clear)

  1. question for those who understood this stuff.. by free+space · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Does that mean that EchoStar can rest assured that their recorders will work indefinitely, or should they continue worrying that the blocking of the ruling can be reversed?

    1. Re:question for those who understood this stuff.. by StringBlade · · Score: 5, Informative

      It means they still have to worry about losing on appeal and getting an injunction again, but for the time being, they can continue to do what they're doing.

      --
      ...and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
  2. Re:This is good. by StringBlade · · Score: 5, Interesting

    From friends who have one, I hear TiVo is a great product - far better than anything offered by Dish, DirecTV or cable companies and I'd hate to see them go out of business because of this. Additionally, Echostar seems to have played some dirty pool in getting their own DVR out the gate by peeking at a TiVo that was left behind during negotiations between TiVo and Echostar for licensing DVRs. But at the same time, I don't think that TiVo should have such a broad patent on this technology. In this case, it seems they're using their patent defensively simply to stay alive in a market that can quickly and easily be taken away from them by the satellite and cable companies that provide the content transport.

    This is a philosophically painful case for me because I want to root for TiVo because they have a superior product, but not for patents. And I want to root for Echostar because I have one of their DVRs and would hate to lose it's functionality. I also don't want to root for TiVo because a win for them will negatively impact Dish customers who through no fault of their own are being punished for Echostar's behavior. That's like Microsoft users being forced to remove the Quicktime player from all Windows installations because of some industrial espionage they did against Apple (just by way of example -- it didn't really happen).

    --
    ...and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
  3. Stayed Tuned For More Judge-on-Judge Action! by Chaffar · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Consumers win, consumers lose... all of this is irrelevant, the truth is that we have a sh*tty patent system that's vague enough to have two judges give 2 different verdicts on the same case.

    In all cases I believe that it is wrong to make EchoStar stop its service immediately, and to remotely disable the current consumers. Consumers that have already paid shouldn't be the ones to bear the consequences. But then again, the consumers' interest is the least of the worries of those concerned...