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–Meanwhile, Injunction against EchoStar Lifted in "Time Warp" Case

In a Form 8-K statement filed earlier this month, DVR vendor/service provider, TiVo, revealed that it has entered into a patent cross-license agreement with IBM. The agreement, under which TiVo paid IBM an undisclosed sum of cash, calls for each party to grant the other a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license "to such party’s patents that are entitled to a priority date on or before September 28, 2006, including all patents and patent applications in existence as of that date with limited exceptions." According to TiVo, the license granted to it by IBM extends to all products other than general purpose data-processing products and data storage devices that are primarily sold separately from other hardware; while the license it granted to IBM extends to all products other than digital media recorders and digital media recorder software. The company said that no license was granted, directly or by implication, to permit the combination of any product with any other item.

In other TiVo news: the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has granted EchoStar a stay of an injunction from a lower court that would have forced it to stop manufacturing and selling its in-house DVR, and to disable all the DVR’s it had deployed. The injunction was issued in August, following TiVo’s victory in its so-called "Time Warp" DVR patent-infringement case against the satellite TV company. In addition to issuing the injunction, the judge in that case ordered EchoStar to pay TiVo $89.6 million in damages (EchoStar is also appealing that decision). In a prepared statement, TiVo responded to the lifting of the injunction against EchoStar: "We are confident that the jury’s decision in TiVo’s favor will be upheld once the Federal Circuit has the opportunity to review the entire record in this case. It is important to note that most injunctions in patent cases are stayed pending appeal, and the appeal itself will be decided on a totally different standard of review."

Originally Published: October 17, 2006 Part 1 in [itvt] Issue 7.00

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