SkyBOX: DISH Wins a Big One
Forget the balloons, prizes, cheers and rah-rah team spirit ... the BIG win for DISH last week came not in San Antonio but in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
Despite widespread expectations to the contrary, the full Federal Circuit Court of Appeals granted DISH Network and EchoStar their petition for a rehearing en banc on the TiVo case. That means that the entire court of six judges will review the injunction against DISH's DVR technology which was upheld by a three judge panel in March. Two of those three judges (with one dissenting) ruled that DISH's workaround of TiVo patents on the DVR systems was insufficient. Had en banc been denied, this could have led to a potentially disastrous shutdown of all DISH DVRs plus a $200 million fine.
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Ob Telecom: I think that more and more competitive issues are going to be decided by courts instead of customers. Issues like this one foretell the future of the VoIP and related markets, as semi-dominant players try to stake out parts of the territory.
TiVo, of course, is a "One Trick Pony", and (like Stacker) they have no choice but to fight with every tool at their disposal.
Bill Horne Moderator