TiVo wins a major victory in its long struggle with EchoStar. A Texas District Court awarded TiVo $73.9 million dollars for a longstanding patent infringement suit against EchoStar, parent company of Dish Network. The ten member jury only took two hours including a smoke break to come to the conclusion that EchoStar had infringed on nine sections of TiVo's patent on the Digital Video Recorder. Digital Video Recorder (DVR) also known as Personal Video Recorder (PVR) is the hard disk technology in set top boxes that allows you to timeshift TV programming. TiVo made the technology a household name around the turn of the century with its service that allows you to record, pause or rewind TV.

EchoStar says the battle is far from over and that they're confident they'll win subsequent appeals. EchoStar had even filed its own suit against TiVo a year ago claiming that TiVo actually stole its technology from 1998 - 2003. Looks like the struggling TiVo isn't out of the woods yet but this healthy victory caused its stock to jump a short lived 18% after the victory was announced.

If TiVo's patent infringement victory holds TiVo is liable to be emboldened and go after other companies like Time Warner and Cablevision two cable companies who use PVR technology for some of their set top boxes. You'll likely see cable providers claiming licensing deals with TiVo before they go to court. If TiVo can weather the long legal road ahead they might become a successful company with undisputable ownership of the PVR patent. The cable and satellite providers licensing deals will be rounded out with telephone company licensing deals if and when they jump into the broadband home entertainment market by providing television programming with PVR capabilities.

Of course Comcast and DirecTV are impervious to TiVo's legal barbs because they have already signed licensing agreements with the little PVR service company.

Truth is in the timing

The announcement of TiVo's victory came one day after DirecTV announced a three extension of its own licensing deal with TiVo. The agreement between TiVo and DirecTV was said to be dead late last year when DirecTV struck out on its own and got another PVR service for its customers. But many owners still have the TiVo / DirecTV boxes and they're in luck, the boxes are going to remain fully licensed at least another three years.