Famous satellite TV service providers TiVo and Echostar have settled over their seven year long Patent litigation. This legal battle between the two companies dates back to 2004, when TiVo sued Echostar alleging that EchoStar is infringing TiVo’s patent for software that allows users to record one TV program while watching another. The suit was filed in the federal court of Texas. Hearing the case in the interim stage, the federal court held that EchoStar had infringed on TiVo patents. The court also granted injunction against Echostar to stop making or selling such devices and to disable existing ones. In order to avoid further infringement, Echostar had altered its technology. But the federal court on 20th April, 2011 held that despite of the alteration, Echo star was still infringing TiVO’s patent.
This finally resulted in an out of court settlement, where TiVo has settled its patent suit against Echo and its sister company Dish Network for $500 million. As per the terms of the settlement, EchoStar and Dish will pay $300 million up front and an additional $200 million in six installments. In the deal, TiVO also will be licensing few of its patents to Dish.
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1 comments:
One weird thing about the settlement proceedings in this patent litigation is the extent to which the parties -- recent adversaries -- gushed about each other in glowing terms afterwards. I'd guess some kind of partnership between the parties may in the offing.
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