You know that huge advantage that we thought Dish Network had over DirecTV, with their 30 national HD stations and multitude of HD DVRs; well, that might come crashing down in a few weeks. TiVo won their lawsuit of patent infringement against Dish Network's parent company, Echostar. The judgment involves EchoStar paying $74.9 million to TiVo because it "willfully infringed [on] TiVo patents that allowed for the digital storage of TV programming." The most significant part of the judgment for many of our readers fails under the second part where EchoStar must basically render all but 192,708 DVR units useless. We don't know what DVRs that will be just yet, but it is safe to say that a good amount of their 12 million + subscriber base is going to be affected. The judge went one step farther too when he denied EchoStar's request that the judgment be held during the appeals processes.

This doesn't look to good folks and we will keep you up-to-date with info as it comes down the Internet pipes.

Read: Reuters
Read: EchoStar's response

UPDATE 1: The US Federal Appeals Court of Washington DC just blocked the injunction according to an EchoStar press release. This means that they will be able to still sell and operate their DVRs -- for the moment at least. (Thanks for the heads up Jay)

UPDATE 2: Zatz Not Funny has copies of the injunction if that is your type of thing.