Judge to EchoStar: Disable your DVRs

Posted on Friday, August 18, 2006 by MegaZone

A federal appeals court on Friday blocked a lower-court ruling that would have forced satellite television provider EchoStar Communications to stop selling many of its digital video recorders, EchoStar said Friday.

Neither pat of this is surprising. The U.S. district court in Texas that heard the TiVo vs. EchoStar case issued an injunction against EchoStar, and EchoStar appealed to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and had the injunction blocked pending the appeal. Sounds fairly standard as these things go. There’ll be a couple of following entries with TiVo’s take on this.

But, boy, imagine if they didn’t get the injunction blocked and EchoStar was forced to disable almost all of the DVRs already in the field. I imagine EchoStar customers would not be happy. And it could still happen – if they lose the appeal I expect they’re scramble to license the patents from TiVo to prevent being forced to shut down.

About MegaZone

MegaZone is the Editor of Gizmo Lovers and the chief contributor. He's been online since 1989 and active in several generations of 'social media' - mailing lists, USENet groups, web forums, and since 2003, blogging.    MegaZone has a presence on several social platforms: Google+ / Facebook / Twitter / LinkedIn / LiveJournal / Web.    You can also follow Gizmo Lovers on other sites: Blog / Google+ / Facebook / Twitter.
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  • buran

    Maybe the customers wouldn’t be happy, but they still would have been using something they didn’t have the right to be using. It would be like customers of a taxi service complaining when the taxis stopped running because it turned out they were all stolen cars.

  • megazone

    Oh, I’m with TiVo on this one. I feel sorry for customers caught in the middle – it is like buying something in good faith only to have the police come around and tell you you’ve recieved stolen goods. But Echostar has been found guilty of violating TiVo’s patents and they don’t deserve to benefit from that.

  • buran

    I imagine there will be breach of contract suits from customers (or fraud) if they lose the service they’re paying for.

  • allyson13

    I’m sure that the laywers are going to have a field day.

    I’d hate to be a customer service agent for Dish Network right now.