AT&T Inc. has agreed to pay TiVo Inc. at least $215 million to settle patent litigation.
The companies also have entered into a cross license of their respective patent portfolios in the advanced TV field, TiVO announced Tuesday.
AT&T has agreed to make an initial payment of $51 million to TiVo, followed by recurring quarterly guaranteed payments that total $164 million through June 2018. The Dallas-based telecommunications giant also will pay TiVo license fees through July 2018 if AT&T's DVR subscriber base exceeds certain levels, according to TiVo, the digital video recorder pioneer based in Alviso, Calif.
"The combination of guaranteed payments and future additional expectations, represents hard-earned compensation for our IP enforcement efforts," TiVo President and CEO Tom Rogers said in a statement. "The settlement also provides us rights to innovate TiVo products and services under license from AT&T and allows us to avoid significant legal expenses that we expect would have been incurred by use during and after trial."
Per subscriber, the payout will be significantly larger than a similar $500 million settlement that TiVo reached last year with Dish Network Corp. and EchoStar Corp., according to The Associated Press. Under that settlement, the parties also agreed to grant certain patent licenses to each other.
In August 2009, TiVo filed complaints in federal district court in Texas against AT&T and Verizon Communications, accusing the telecommunications titans of infringing on its patented DVR technologies. A spokesperson for TiVo could not be immediately reached to comment on the status of the Verizon litigation.
