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The court also, however, rejected a ruling that Dish’s software “workaround” was insufficient to avoid infringement.
So who wins in this case?
TiVo said it looked forward to a permanent injunction against Dish, and that the ruling, “paves the way for TiVo to receive substantial damages and contempt sanctions regarding the DVRs that EchoStar and Dish Network failed to disable.”
Dish, whose stock is down 35 cents, or 1.5%, at $23.52, said in a statement it will take its case for continuing its DVR service to the Supreme Court, and said it was pleased its software workaround will get another hearing.
Given that the fight between TiVo and Dish has been going on for years now, with ups and downs for both parties, Sanford Bernstein’s Craig Moffett this afternoon wonders if this is the end of the matter.
Moffett thinks TiVo wins decisively, because the real issue here was not damages from infringement, but rather the prospect Dish would be forced to shut down 4 million to 8 million subscriber boxes. He expects that the potential cost of $3 billion to Dish to do that means that, “The only alternative, it would seem, is settlement to sidestep this disablement requirement. And that settlement would presumably be on TiVo’s terms.”
For TiVo, with a $1.35 billion market cap, anything remotely like $3 billion would be huge. With roughly $10.5 billion in market cap for Dish, a settlement of that kind would be “highly material,” writes Moffett. “Some of this, however, is presumably already in the stock. Still, we see the potential for further downside from a settlement.”
Moffett reiterated a Market Perform rating on Dish shares and a $22 price target.
