Defendant
2 cases as defendant.
DISH Network Corporation (common short name "DISH"; consumer brand styled "dish") is an American pay-TV and wireless telecommunications company headquartered in Englewood, Colorado (Meridian, in unincorporated Douglas County). Its corporate lineage traces to EchoStar, founded in 1980 by Charlie Ergen as a satellite-TV equipment distributor; the DISH Network brand and subscription TV service launched in 1996. DISH traded on Nasdaq under "DISH" until December 31, 2023, when EchoStar Corporation (Nasdaq: SATS) completed its acquisition of DISH, which survived the merger as a wholly owned EchoStar subsidiary. Third-party financial databases list roughly 14,000 employees and about $14 billion in annual revenue; those figures now fold into EchoStar's consolidated reporting.
Products / services. DISH operates three main lines: (1) DISH TV, a direct-broadcast satellite pay-TV service with owned and leased satellites, DBS/FSS spectrum, leased fiber, receiver systems and in-home installation, plus the DISH Anywhere streaming/DVR apps; (2) SLING TV, an over-the-top live-linear streaming service (domestic, international and Latino programming); and (3) Wireless, comprising retail wireless under the Boost Mobile brand and 5G network deployment. As of end-2023 the company reported about 8.5 million Pay-TV subscribers (≈6.5M DISH TV, ≈2.1M SLING) and roughly 7.4 million wireless subscribers.
Patent-litigation posture. DISH is an operating company appearing exclusively as a defendant in the tracked data — 0 plaintiff cases, 2 defendant cases — consistent with a large service provider being targeted rather than asserting patents.
Notable cases. Both tracked suits were filed by Cedar Lane Technologies Inc., a Canadian-based entity that the Stanford NPE Litigation Database and Unified Patents classify as a patent assertion entity (NPE) asserting acquired portfolios. The cases are Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. v. Dish Network and Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. v. DISH Network, both in the Western District of Texas, a venue that appears frequently in Cedar Lane's docket. No merits determinations are reflected in the case data provided.
Customedia petitioned for a writ of certiorari seeking review of the '437 patent appeal. The Supreme Court denied certiorari on October 13, 2020, and later rejected a rehearing petition.
Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. sued DISH Network in W.D. Tex. The case was reported in an IPWatchdog roundup, but the retrieved patent list did not clearly show U.S. Patent 6,526,411, so the '411 tie is unconfirmed.