March 13 (Reuters) – Dish Network LLC ( DISH.O ) must pay $469 million for infringing two patents held by parental control technology maker ClearPlay Inc related to filtering material from streaming video, a jury in the US federal court in Utah decided.
A Salt Lake City jury reached its decision Friday in ClearPlay’s case against Dish, finding that Dish’s AutoHop feature for skipping commercials on its Hopper set-top boxes was covered of ClearPlay patents.
While the jury found that Dish’s technology infringed ClearPlay’s patent rights, they rejected ClearPlay’s contention that Dish intentionally copied its technology.
A Dish spokesman said Monday that the company was disappointed by the jury’s decision and would contest the verdict, possibly through an appeal. ClearPlay representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday.
Latest Updates
See 2 more stories
Salt Lake City-based ClearPlay’s technology allows users to filter adult content such as sex, violence and drug use from DVDs and streaming video. It sued Dish in 2014, saying AutoHop’s technology for cutting commercials from DVR content infringed on its patents for a “method of filtering multimedia content without changing the underlying video.”
Englewood, Colorado-based Dish said AutoHop works differently from ClearPlay’s patented technology. Dish also said the patents were invalid, arguing they were clearly based on prior inventions or covered abstract ideas.
The case is ClearPlay Inc v. Dish Network LLC, US District Court for the District of Utah, No. 2:14-cv-00191.
Reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington Editing by Will Dunham and David Bario
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
