TiVo (NSDQ: TIVO) has scored another legal victory in its battle against the Dish Network. The U.S. Supreme Court has denied Dish’s appeal on a $74 million penalty for violating the patent on TiVo’s Time Warp, AP reported. In January, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit agreed with a lower court that DVRs distributed by Dish, formerly known as EchoStar Communications (NSDQ: SATS), violated TiVo’s Time Warp feature, which covers devices that can record, store, play, rewind and fast forward live TV. That ruling overturned the lower court’s finding that Dish also infringed on the patent’s hardware elements. Two years ago, a Texas jury found that Dish had violated TiVo’s patent and awarded the company $94 million in damages. In the meantime, Dish Network has said it is creating new software for its DVR feature that will avoid the previous DVR issues.

TiVo released a statement applauding the Supreme Court’s decision, adding, “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.”

Update: Statement from Dish Network and EcoStar:  “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.”

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