Dish Network and EchoStar announced Monday that they will pay TiVo $500 million to settle all of their ongoing patent litigation, ending the companies' seven-year running legal battle.
Under the terms of the settlement, Dish and EchoStar will make an initialy initial payment to TiVo of $300 million with the remaining $200 million distributed in six equal annual installments between 2012 and 2017. TiVo, Dish and EchoStar agreed to dismiss all pending litigation between the companies with prejudice and to dissolve all injunctions against Dish and EchoStar.
Last month Dish and EchoStar essentially ran out of legal options against TiVo, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld a lower court's ruling that Dish must disable eight models of its DVRs -- found to have infringed on a key patent owned by TiVo -- and also affirmed that the satellite operator and EchoStar would have to pay sanctions for violating prior injunctions to disable the equipment.
