Dish and EchoStar made the request in a complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Wilmington, Del.

Dish, a satellite TV provider, and EchoStar said they began developing “a novel DVR” after a Texas jury ruled in 2006 that older versions of their software violated the TiVo patent.

TiVo won the appeal in that case, and the trial judge still must set a figure the companies should pay.

“The lawsuit is in response to TiVo’s continued public statements that our new DVR software infringes” the patent, Dish and EchoStar said. The companies said they are “in full compliance” with a court order blocking their use of TiVo’s invention.

TiVo’s so-called time warp patent covers technology that lets users record a TV program and play it back at the same time to allow, for example, instant replay or pausing. The Texas jury awarded in Alviso, Calif.- based TiVo $74 million in the case against Dish and EchoStar, an amount that has grown to more than $94 million.

Dish and EchoStar said they want to sell their new DVRs “without the continuing threat of litigation.”

Dish, based in Englewood, Colo., was known as EchoStar Communications Corp. before spinning o/ Echo- Star, its satellite-TV equipment company, into a separately traded unit this year.

“We have not seen EchoStar’s filing so we can’t comment on it,” TiVo said in an e-mailed statement. “However, these issues are in front of the District Court in Texas and we remain confident in the outcome.”