Earlier today the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review DISH’s long standing patent dispute with TiVo.  As a result, DISH has agreed to pay TiVo $104 million!  Here’s the statement that DISH released earlier today:

As expected, the Supreme Court denied our petition for certiorari today.

The Supreme Court’s decision, however, does not impact our software design-around, which has been placed in DISH DVRs subject to the district court’s injunction, and our customers can continue using their DISH DVRs. We believe that the design-around does not infringe Tivo’s patent and that Tivo’s pending motion for contempt should be denied. We look forward to that ruling in the near future.

Because of the Supreme Court’s decision, we will pay Tivo approximately $104 million (the amount the jury awarded in 2006 plus interest). The money is in an escrow account and will be released to Tivo in the next few days.

Here’s TiVo’s statement:

We are extremely pleased that the United States Supreme Court has denied EchoStar’s petition to review the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit unanimous ruling that upheld the District Court judgment of willful patent infringement, full award of damages, and a permanent injunction against EchoStar’s infringing DVR products. We look forward to the expeditious receipt of damages awarded by the District Court covering the period through September 8, 2006 and remain confident that the District Court will enforce the injunction and award further damages from EchoStar’s continued infringement of our Time Warp patent.

Obviously this is great news for TiVo. I hope this means that the dispute is over and that TiVo can get back to the business of creating great DVR hardware/software….