TiVo and EchoStar head into the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit this Thursday to continue arguing their ongoing patent dispute. The docket is pretty tight, so the hearing should be a brief affair.
An unexpected benefit in attending the pre-DigitalLife event last week was spotting Kunal Madhukar’s badge (and the person attached). Kunal is the Bear Stearns analyst covering digital media — In fact, I’ve quoted him a few times here on ZNF. Kunal has kindly provided me with docket details and, if time permits, I may sit in on the hearing. I doubt they’ll allow mobile blogging or even photographs, but I’ll be sure to draw stick figures of the participants. As far as the case goes, Kunal believes the Final Order could take “six months or more” and finds it “difficult to handicap [the] outcome.”
I realize things appear a bit muddied on my end: EchoStar will be my employer shortly and I’m a TiVo customer… However, I don’t presume to be a patent or legal expert – which hopefully limits me to covering the facts of this landmark case without bias.
I can’t wait for this lawsuit to be over, once the dust has settled we might see a DishTiVo unit and I could finally get HD.