Washington
– Shares of TiVo (NASD: TIVO) plummeted as much as 36% on Friday, after the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the Federal Circuit decided to reconsider an earlier patent ruling
in TiVo’s favor in its ongoing dispute with EchoStar (NASD: SATS). The court has vacated its
March 4 ruling, where a panel of judges upheld a lower court’s finding that
EchoStar was in contempt for infringing on TiVo’s digital video recorder
patent.
The full U.S. Court of Appeals will now reconsider the appeal during an
en banc hearing.
The court will consider "whether the judge erred in not
giving DISH a trial to determine if its workaround was still infringing TiVo’s
patent," according to BusinessWeek.
EchoStar recently stated that it was
preparing for the possibility of having to disable millions of its customers’
set-top boxes because of the patent ruling, at an estimated cost running into
the billions.
"We are disappointed that we do not yet have finality in
this case despite years of litigation but we remain confident that the Federal
Circuit’s ruling in our favor will be reaffirmed after all of the judges on the
Federal Circuit have had the opportunity to review the merits of this
case," TiVo said in a statement.
Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/w8qcf
(TiVo statement)
http://snipurl.com/w8q6p
(BusinessWeek)
