PVR Wire

You may be aware that TiVo sued Echostar over infringing patents relating to the technology behind its PVRs. TiVo won and the court ruled that TiVo would get $88 million in damages and also Echostar would have to stop selling and using infringing PVRs.

Bit it wasn't over and Echostar appealed and was awarded some breathing space for the time being and then later requested more time to get certain documents together. The case has now got progressively more complex but I've tried to make sense of it the best I can.

The U.S. District Court Judge Duffey is now getting very frustrated with Echostar for not getting these documents in on time. It's rare for a court to give a company an extended time for appeal and Echostar is really dragging its heals in the mud and as a result is rubbing the courts up the wrong way.

Judge Duffey has now ordered that Echostar must now get the documents together by February 15th.

If all this legal mumbo jumbo is leaving your head hurting let me just conclude that the outlook still looks good for TiVo and Echostar is in for a tough ride.

I've just found out that Korea's Daum Communications Corp who owns Lycos is filing a patent lawsuit against TiVo, Netflix and Blockbuster.

The lawsuit was filed on January 3rd and Lycos is claiming that TiVo, NetFlix and Blockbuster is infringing a patent which covers "information filtering technology,"and basically relates to how TiVo, Netflix and Blockbuster provide recommendations to customers for movies or television shows.

It seems to be and odd time for Lycos to take on the lawsuit and also odd that the company has decided to take on three companies at once, rather than targeting a weak company to gain some legal leverage, or targeting a large company with deep pockets.

Davis Freeberg has discussed the lawsuit in more detail, which was originally brought to everyone's attention with a brief mention in the Mercury News but as of yet has not had much press coverage.