Dish Network Corp., which has won a temporary legal reprieve from halting its digital-video recording service, is abusing the legal system with years of legal delays while it continues to infringe TiVo Inc.’s technology, an industry trade group is alleging.
The Association for Competitive Technology Inc., which represents smaller technology companies as well as Microsoft Corp., Oracle Corp. and eBay Inc., claims in a brief filed with the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that Douglas County-based Dish and EchoStar Communications Corp. are seeking delays of an earlier court ruling to “reap the benefits of its infringement.”
TiVo has also urged the federal appeals court to stop Dish from providing digital-video recording services, saying it’s losing business while Dish profits from the use of a TiVo invention.
Dish was ordered to pay $192.7 million and halt the service after a federal judge said June 2 that changes to the system weren’t enough to work around a TiVo patent. Dish was given a temporary reprieve, allowing it to continue selling the service for the time being.
“EchoStar’s contention that ‘damages are obviously adequate compensation’ ignores not only lost potential customers but also the reality that its delay tactics stifle innovation and discourage small businesses from competing in today’s knowledge economy,” the group said in the friend-of-the-court brief filed Wednesday. The association isn’t a party to the case.
TiVo has said it has waited long enough since winning a 2006 trial and first appeal.
Dish, the second-biggest U.S. satellite-television provider, was first ordered to halt its service in August 2006 after TiVo won a jury verdict that the service violates its “time warp” patent for technology that lets users record and play back a television program at the same time — allowing, for example, instant replays and pauses.
That order never went into effect because the federal circuit court put it on hold pending the appeal. After the appeals court upheld the verdict last year, Dish continued to provide its service, saying it had made necessary changes to work around the patent.
TiVo has argued since then that the changes weren’t sufficient, and on June 2, the judge agreed that Dish was in contempt of the 2006 decision.
