U.S. District Judge Laura Swain in Manhattan denied...
U.S. District Judge Laura Swain in Manhattan denied ABC’s motion for a preliminary injunction to bar Dish Network’s PrimeTime Anytime and AutoHop features. PrimeTime Anytime allows Dish subscribers to record prime-time shows and save them for up to eight days,…
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while AutoHop allows them to play back those recordings commercial-free. Swain denied the motion Wednesday in an opinion and order that was sealed because many of the documents submitted for and against the injunction were marked confidential, her order said. She gave both sides until next Wednesday to request which portions of those submissions should be redacted in her final opinion and order. The denial is the third time a federal court has denied an injunction motion by one of the major broadcast networks against PrimeTime Anytime and AutoHop, Dish said. It declared the latest denial, as it had the earlier ones, a victory for consumers. ABC downplayed the ruling as “only a preliminary decision and the first step in the judicial process.” ABC still believes AutoHop and PrimeTime Anytime “breach our retransmission consent agreement” with Dish, the network said in a written statement. Those features also “infringe upon ABC’s copyrights, and unfairly compete with the authorized on-demand and commercial-free options currently offered by ABC and its licensees,” it said.