VIZIO sure ends up in a whole lot of legal battles, but one way or another, it always seems to find its way out in the long run. Such is the case once again today, as the current LCD TV king has apparently said all the right things to Sony. If you'll recall, Sony (along with a slew of others) filed suit against Vizio awhile back over patent licensing concerns, but now it seems the two have reached a mutual agreement to use each other's technologies without bickering over who owns what. The release on the matter states that Sony "has become a licensee under VIZIO's patent portfolio," and that "VIZIO now is a licensee under Sony's color television patent portfolio." Who knows how much under-the-table cash and shaky promises had to be passed along in order to make everyone happy, but hey, a problem solved is a problem solved.

[Image courtesy of TooMuchNick / WireImage]

Update: Sony's response to all of this is after the break, courtesy of a company spokesperson who pinged us directly.

Okay, so it's not the cool billion dollars in damages we'd heard TiVo was asking for, but $200 million ain't chump change if you're broke, you know? That's the amount in contempt damages TiVo will get if EchoStar loses its upcoming appeal in the endless time warp patent case, bringing the total amount of money on the table to nearly $400 million. As usual, that means virtually nothing for the average Dish or TiVo customer, but at least the lawyers involved can all buy new Audis for the winter now.

We'll let the analysts make sense of TiVo's new projection that it will lose $8 to $10 million in the third quarter, larger than Wall Street expectations while projected revenues are lower -- we're too busy adding Verizon and AT&T to the patent battlemap. Today it filed complaints against both for violating three of its DVR-related patents -- Nos. 6,233,389 B1 ("Multimedia Time Warping System"), 7,529,465 B2 ("System for Time Shifting Multimedia Content Streams"), and 7,493,015 B1 ("Automatic Playback Overshoot Correction System") if you must know -- seeking damages for past infringement and a permanent injunction. We'd assumed it would wait until settling things with DISH to push forward against other companies, but it looks like we're not the only ones getting impatient. Beyond the legal slapfight there's a few nuggets for the bleep bloop faithful, with the Comcast TiVo on-line scheduler beginning to roll out in Boston plus further expansions on the way and the due-in-2010 DirecTV HD TiVo still on track -- we'll need a few seasons of Law & Order queued up before this mess ever gets resolved.

Read - TiVo Swings to Loss, Files Infringement Suits
Read - TiVo Reports Results for the Second Quarter Fiscal Year 2010 Ended July 31, 2009
Read - TiVo Files Complaints for Patent Infringement Against AT&T and Verizon Communications in United States District Court, Eastern District of Texas; Seeking Damages and Injunction

You knew it couldn't be over, right? The long running TiVo vs. DISH / Echostar patent case took a not-so-new twist yesterday when the Patent and Trademark Office issued a preliminary finding rejecting some of the claims of its Time Warp patent. While DISH was pleased, considering the PTO's conclusions as "highly relevant" to its ongoing appeal, TiVo issued a statement calling this step "not unusual" pointing out that the exact same thing happened when its patent was reexamined in 2005 (and subsequently upheld in 2007,) and that the next step in the process is where it will be able to present its explanation for the first time. All you need to know is that it will still be a while before anyone involved (except the two company's lawyers) are cashing any large checks, or gets their DVR taken away.

[Via Multichannel News]

Read - TiVo Statement on Developments in Lawsuit Against EchoStar
Read - DISH Network and EchoStar Statement Regarding Tivo

Remember when we thought that those $90 million and $190 million judgments in the endless TiVo / EchoStar case were big noise? Yeah, they were apparently pocket change: according to documents recently filed with the court, TiVo's asking for nearly a billion dollars in contempt sanctions against EchoStar. Unfortunately, the original document in which TiVo made the request was filed under seal because it contains confidential information, but it appears that TiVo's none too pleased that EchoStar violated the permanent injunction that ordered it to disable some 193,000 DVRs in the wild, and it's looking for some payback. For its part, EchoStar says that it doesn't have to comply with the court's order because the injunction was put on hold pending appeal -- an argument that appears on the surface to make perfect sense, but since we can't read TiVo's motion we can't say for sure what's going on, and there's always a chance the company's just playing hardball in order to force a late settlement. Given the rocky history of this endless case, we doubt that's likely, but one thing's for certain: all these lawyers are eating well tonight.

It looks like at least one round of the battle between Funai and VIZIO is drawing to a close, and it's a big win for VIZIO. U.S. Customs has ruled that all current VIZIO TVs do not infringe on Funai's Patent 6,115,074 -- which was rejected by the Patent Office a few months ago. With the USPTO and US Customs now on the same page, all the bureaucratic checkmarks are in place and VIZIO TVs can freely enter the US on their immigrant-inspired journey to homes all across this fair land. Next up is VIZIO's countersuit against Funai -- with drama like this unfolding between TV manufacturers, who needs an actual TV for entertainment?

News of another delay should be absolutely no surprise to anyone that's followed the details of this case, as DISH was granted a stay by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit pending its appeal of a $190 million ruling in favor of TiVo which will allow its customers to continue using their DVRs, at least for now. For its part, TiVo repeated its praise of the "thorough and well-reasoned decision finding EchoStar in contempt of court for violating the injunction and awarding further damages" and is confident the ruling will be upheld, again. Did anyone really think this one would just end so easily?

Read - DISH Network and EchoStar Statement Regarding Tivo
Read - TiVo Statement on Decision by U.S. Court of Appeals to Stay Permanent Injunction Issued by District Court in Lawsuit Against EchoStar

It's been a long, messy road, but now that TiVo's beaten a victory out of EchoStar in that seemingly-endless DVR patent lawsuit it sounds like the company is trying to exert some muscle -- it's already in talks to bring its service to Time Warner Cable, and sources have told Bloomberg the ultimate plan is to eventually collect royalties from every pay-TV provider in the US. That might sound bullying and even a little trollish, but keep in mind these patents have withstood pretty much every legal challenge EchoStar could throw at them, so TiVo's operating from a position of some certainty here -- especially since it's got license agreements with huge players like Comcast and DirecTV to use as leverage in negotiations as well. Of course, none of this solves any of TiVo's actual problems with its products, and the company's topsy-turvy balance sheet has some analysts thinking its ripe for a buyout by one of the bigs, so things could change dramatically at any minute, but for right now it sounds like your chances of getting the TiVo interface on your cable or satellite company DVR just went up, and that's almost certainly a good thing.

It's a longshot, but DISH mentioned in a court filing Monday that it is still looking for a workaround that would keep its DVR from infringing on TiVo patents, but admitting it "does not know whether a further design-around is even possible." Multichannel News pulled out the one sentence filing, although whether DISH seriously believes it can do dual tuner recording without violating the "Time Warp" patent or is just stalling for time while it looks for an antidote is still unclear.

[Picture courtesy one of many GPS accidents]

One of our favorite rumors rides again, but this time it's Dish that might be interested in buying TiVo. The new twist this time though is the motivation, and we can totally see how Dish would love to make this happen. The problem of course is that TiVo isn't interested in any such shenanigans and has gone as far as to write a poison pill into its bylaws. Our friend Davis Freeberg has been writing about TiVo's poison pill for years and more recently, at about the same time as the latest court decision came down against Dish, he saw some interesting traffic in his web server logs from none other than a Dish Network IP. No clue who the user was, but they spent some time reading up on TiVo's poison pill. Davis is no lawyer, but it is his understanding that if Dish attempted to take over TiVo, it'd cost them about $71 per share -- which comes to about $7.5 Billion. This is about seven times what the stock is actually worth and although we'd be shocked if this happened, we have to admit that crazier things have.

It's the case that never ends -- the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has issued a temporary delay of the injunction and fine handed down yesterday in the EchoStar / TiVo lawsuit while it considers an appeal, meaning that DISH owners with older DVRs won't have to worry about losing their pause-and-rewind functionality at least for now. That pretty much means we're back in stasis with this one, with even more delay to come if the appeal is granted. That's cool, we needed a nap anyway.

We're a bit hesitant to call this one done given the history involved, but a federal judge in Texas has dealt DISH / EchoStar yet another serious blow in its long-standing dispute with TiVo, and this time he's taken a number of other measures that could cause EchoStar to finally rethink its workaround-litigate strategy. The big setback for EchoStar, however, is the one-two punch of $190 million in damages it's been ordered to pay TiVo and an order to disable the "infringing function" on all but 193,000 DVRs now in the hands of subscribers. The judge also found that EchoStar's recently-implemented workaround technology still violated the patent in question and, as a result, he's ordered EchoStar to inform the court before it decides to try its hand at another "design-around" of the infringing patent. For its part, TiVo says that it is "extremely gratified by the Court's well reasoned and thorough decision," while DISH / EchoStar would only say that it plans to appeal the court's decision and file a motion to stay the order with a federal appeals court.

Read - The New York Times, "Court Awards TiVo $190 Million in EchoStar Patent Case"
Read - TiVo Statement on U.S District Court for the Eastern District of Texas Decision

In the latest episode of this ongoing saga Vizio (now feeling its oats enough to claim the "Number One Shipper of Flat Panel HDTVs in the USA" title) is again suing Funai for patent infringement and seeking an injunction barring Funai from importing and selling its HDTVs. Just in case that wasn't etherous enough, Vizio cofounder Laynie Newsome chimed in with a line to make Funai's soul burn slow, pointing out that unlike some companies, Vizio's patent portfolio has not been rejected by the USPTO. We don't know how realistic it is that shipments of Funai's Sylvania, Philips, Magnavox and other branded products could be stalled by the action -- note Funai's so far ineffective action on Vizio's products -- but hopefully this latest strike brings things closer to a resolution and more cheap televisions for all.

Just when it looked like the long-running patent dispute was tipping Vizio's way, the U.S. International Trade Commission has ruled in favor of Funai, issuing an order to block imports of Vizio HDTVs. According to Bloomberg the ban is still eligible to be reviewed by President Obama while the patent case itself is still being reviewed by an appeals court, but if Vizio wants to keep its shipments flowing it will have to post a bond of $2.50 per television. We've put a call in to Vizio to find out what this means for its immediate future -- and that sweet LED backlit display from CES -- and confirmed that while this order goes into effect immediately, you should still be able to find sets on shelves and they will continue to do business as usual during the presidential review period, but feel free to read its press release in response after the break for more details.