TiVo trying to block EchoStar DVR services

TiVo trying to block EchoStar DVR services

TiVo Inc. and EchoStar Communications Corp. are currently involved in a bitter legal fight over patent disputes. And this has now gone more intense as TiVo filed an injunction seeking to ban EchoStar from making or selling its digital video recorder product.

In a paper filed in the courts, TiVo has asked the court to disable the DVR functionality in all but 192,702 of EchoStar’s DVRs already placed with customers. In addition, they are also seeking to recall products already with distributors and retailers and to stop the production of infringing products.

U.S. District Judge David Folsom would be deciding upon these demands. The courts have already decided that EchoStar willfully infringed TiVo’s “time-warp” patent, which controls the way a DVR simultaneously records one program while playing back another. TiVo was also awarded $74 million for this infringement of their patents.