Dish to pay TiVo $500m
May 2, 2011
By Chris Forrester
Dish Network and its owner EchoStar have agreed to pay $500 million to TiVo in order to settle all of their patent disputes with TiVo. $300 million will be paid immediately, and a total of a further $200 million paid in six annual payments spread between next year and 2017. TiVo shares rocketed 25 per cent in pre-market trading.
In a joint statement both parties say the three parties to the dispute have entered into cross-licensing agreements whereby TiVo would license to Dish and EchoStar technology for its Time Warp patent, while EchoStar would license to TiVo certain DVR-related patents.
The bitter legal wrangle has been running since 2004 when TiVo first sued EchoStar for patent infringement. The writing was on the wall as far as EchoStar/Dish are concerned when two weeks ago on April 20th a panel of federal appeals judges placed EchoStar/Dish in contempt for failing to abide by an earlier injunction.