October 17, 2010 - On October 6, the U.S. Patent Office (USPTO) affirmed TiVo's embattled patent on its "Time Warp" technology - a DVR system that allows the user to record one program while watching another.
The Patent Office action was the latest development in a patent infringement lawsuit that began in 2004 and resulted in an award of $200 million to TiVo in 2009. That decision was appealed by Dish/Echostar, leading to an appeals court ruling in May 2010 that called for reexamining the patent to determine its validity and whether the trial court judge should have granted Dish Network a full trial. (The patent had already survived a previous reexamination, being upheld by the USPTO as valid in November 2007.)
Now that the patent has been affirmed, the case will proceed on November 9, when an appeals court will hear arguments on the case to determine whether Dish is still infringing the patent.