TiVo Statement on Order Granting Injunction Against EchoStar and Damages of Over $89.6 Million

TiVo Inc. (NASDAQ: TIVO), the creator of and a leader in television services for digital video recorders (DVR), today announced that U.S. District Court Judge David Folsom granted TiVo’s motion for permanent injunction to prevent EchoStar Communications Corp. (NASDAQ:DISH, “ECC”) from making, using, offering for sale or selling in the United States their DVR products at issue in the case (DP-501, DP-508, DP-510, DP-721, DP-921, DP-522, DP-625, DP-942, and all EchoStar DVRs that are not more than colorably different from any of these products). Judge Folsom also ordered ECC to pay TiVo approximately $73.992 million in damages as awarded by the jury, prejudgment interest at the prime rate through July 31, 2006 of approximately $5.638 million, and supplemental damages for infringement through July 31, 2006 in the amount of approximately $10.317 million. Judge Folsom denied EchoStar’s request to stay the injunction pending appeal. The injunction extends to all of ECC’s affiliates, employees, agents and representatives, and any persons in active concert or participation with them who have notice of the order. The Judge’s ruling is final and is appealable.

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Judge to EchoStar: Disable your DVRs

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.

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Adults in DVR Households Read More, Surf More and Watch TV More

According to the latest data from Mediamark Research, 8.6% of U.S. adults reported having a DVR in their household. That percentage rose to 11.2% of adult households in the Spring 2006 release. (March 2005 to early May 2006.) The report summarizes that U.S. adults whose households have a digital video recorder are more upscale than those that do not and are more likely to be heavy readers of magazines and newspapers. They are also heavy users of the Internet.

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Sony ships recordable Blu-ray discs to U.S.

Sony has begun shipping 50-gigabyte recordable Blu-ray Disc media to the United States, the company announced Wednesday. A prominent backer of the next-generation media format, Sony shipped its first Blu-ray titles in June and has re-engineered the AccuCore technology used in its recordable DVDs to fit the high-definition technology. Additionally, Wednesday’s announcement confirmed that Sony will ship rewritable Blu-ray media later this year.

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Next-gen DVD war could be messy–or not

Will the much-hyped next-generation DVD format war be a bloody battle, a bloodless coup or simply a stalemate? Depends on who you ask.

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