TiVo has said that the US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) has reaffirmed the validity of all claims of the Time Warp Patent at issue in the second reexamination of the patent made at the request of EchoStar. It means the US DBS provider Dish may be forced to withdraw its four million DVRs from service.
TiVo had been pursuing the examination since June when the PTO rejected a claim from TiVo that it held a patent on the Time Warp technology.
The Multimedia Timewarping System patent allows the user to store a selected programme while simultaneously watching another.
In a statement, TiVo said that the decision was final and that EchoStar would not be permitted to appeal. “Today’s decision further validates our IP and brings us closer to ending EchoStar’s ongoing infringement. Moreover, we remain confident that the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit will uphold and enforce an injunction against EchoStar’s ongoing willful infringement of the Time Warp Patent.”
The case began in 2004, when TiVo sued EchosStar’s Dish DBS platform over the ability of its technology to store and retrieve video from the DVR. Dish lost the case and subsequently redesigned the software to avoid any potential breach. However, a judge in a Texas court said Dish remained in breach of a permanent injunction he had imposed.
