TiVo appears to have won a decisive victory in its patent infringement lawsuit against satellite TV provider EchoStar. Today, the US Patent and Trademark Office issued a final and unappealable decision on TiVo's patent 6,233,389 for a "multimedia time warping system," ruling that the patent was valid and enforceable.

TiVo sued EchoStar in 2005 over the DVRs the satellite company manufactures and sells for its Dish Network. In April 2006, a jury found EchoStar liable for patent infringement and awarded TiVo $73 million in damages. In August of that year, TiVo obtained an injunction against EchoStar, ordering it to stop selling DVRs and disable the DVR functionality on its products within 30 days. The judge also upped the damage award to $90 million.

EchoStar filed a countersuit challenging the validity of the '389 patent, but a federal judge put that suit on hold until the USPTO ruled on the patent. EchoStar was, however, able to win a stay of the injunction allowing it to continue manufacturing and selling DVRs while the patent reexamination process played out.

"We are extremely pleased that the PTO has now found all claims of the Time Warp Patent to be valid after conducting a reexamination of the patent requested by EchoStar," said TiVo in a statement. "We are hopeful that the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit will uphold the district court judgment of patent infringement and reinstate the injunction."

Now that the USPTO has ruled decisively in TiVo's favor, the case will go before the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The decision will strengthen TiVo's hand in negotiations with other DVR makers, and makes it more likely that the appeals court will reinstate the injunction, forcing EchoStar to pay damages for the infringement and shut off their customers' DVRs. EchoStar may now attempt to settle the case with TiVo to avoid having the permanent injunction reinstated.