EchoStar Communications Corp infringed a TiVo Inc patent in building digital video recorders and must pay nearly $74 million in damages, a court that specializes in patent cases ruled on Thursday.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said in its decision that it partially affirmed a verdict from a federal district court in Texas.
That lower court had ruled that EchoStar's digital video recorders infringed what it called the "software" claims of a TiVo patent. But the appeals court reversed a portion of the lower court's decision which said the EchoStar devices also infringed on what it called "hardware" claims.
