It's a dark day for EchoStar, the company that found themselves at the hostile end of a TiVo lawsuit a while back. After EchoStar challenged the validity of the patent that TiVo accused them of violating, a court has found that TiVo's patent is valid and that they are entitled to damages.

EchoStar will be facing about $74 million in damages, not including interest, for their patent violations. Even worse, they won't be able to sell their DVR service to new customers and might even be forced to halt service to existing customers. Hopefully for EchoStar, they'll instead work up a deal with TiVo in which they can pay royalties or otherwise be forced to lose such a popular service.

Likely EchoStar will continue to appeal, but at this point they've most likely lost.