TiVo lawsuit hits $1bn

Satellite TV systems manufacturer EchoStar filed a motion in the US District Court in Marshall, Texas, to suspend proceedings until the outcome of EchoStar's federal appeal is heard, in the patent infringement case brought against it by DVR manufacturer TiVo, according to Betanews.

An injunction against EchoStar is being stayed pending that appeal.

The big news is EchoStar's assertion that sanctions being sought against it amount to as much as $1 billion, which is the first time it has alluded to TiVo's potential jackpot.

While the headlines on Mosaid Technologies are about the patent-infringement suit it opened against IBM, the case won't be resolved for years, reports The Wall Street Journal.

Of more pressing concern is whether Mosaid can renew its patent-licence agreement with Samsung Electronics.

The five-year agreement generates an estimated $14 million to $16 million annually for Mosaid, an Ottawa patent-licensing company.

Sun Microsystems is suing start-up GreenBytes for allegedly claiming that Sun stole its data deduplication technology, states PC World.

Sun says GreenBytes, which was founded in 2007 and appears to be still in stealth mode, claims to have developed proprietary source code called ZFS+ for use with Sun's ZFS (Zettabyte File System) technology.

ZFS is open source, but GreenBytes told Sun it did not intend to make its code open source, according to a lawsuit Sun filed last month.