Patent setback for TiVo

TiVo Inc., a pioneer of digital-video recording, lost a ruling before the US Patent and Trademark Office over rights to technology that’s the subject of a legal dispute with Dish Network Corp. and EchoStar Corp.

The agency issued a final rejection Friday of two aspects of a patent on what TiVo calls its “time warp” technology, which lets users record a television program and play it back at the same time. The patent office review is a parallel proceeding to TiVo’s legal case before a US appeals court.

The two patent claims are the same ones that a jury in 2006 found Englewood, Colo.-based Dish and EchoStar to have infringed. The patent office found that the two elements under review were an obvious variation of earlier inventions. TiVo can appeal the agency’s ruling, and the patent remains valid and enforceable during that process, which can take at least a year.