(3 June 2009 5:35 pm)

MUMBAI: A Federal Court has awarded set-top box maker TiVo $103 million plus interest in its long-running patent dispute with EchoStar Communications and ordered the latter to disable infringing features found on its subscribers' digital video recorders (DVRs).

US District Judge David Folsom found EchoStar, which is now part of Dish Network, in contempt of Court for violating a permanent injunction by re-programming millions of DVRs with a new 'workaround'.

"The harm caused to TiVo by EchoStar's contempt is substantial," Folsom wrote. "EchoStar has gained millions of customers since this court's injunction was issued, customers that are now potentially unreachable by TiVo," he added.

Dish, which has roughly 13.6 million subscribers, said in a statement that it would appeal the contempt ruling and file a motion to stay an order that requires it to disable the disputed DVR features within 30 days.

"Our engineers spent close to a year designing around TiVo's patent and removed the very features that TiVo said infringed at trial," the company said. "Existing Dish Network customers with DVRs are not immediately impacted by these recent developments."

California.-based TiVo applauded the decision. "We are extremely gratified by the Court's well-reasoned and thorough decision, in which it rejected EchoStar's attempted workaround claim regarding the TiVo patent, found EchoStar to be in contempt of Court, and ordered the permanent injunction fully enforced," TiVo said in a statement.

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