lawsuits

Companies including Walt Disney, CBS and Viacom have asked the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to step in and block an FCC decision that would forcethem to reveal the terms of their business deals. Those deals are part of the public review of Comcast’s $45 billion bid to buy Time Warner Cable and AT&T’s $48 billion plan to buy DirecTV.

Fashion might rock, but the producers of the September special Fashion Rocks apparently don’t. In fact, they’re a bunch of downright deadbeats, according to a lawsuit filed by CBS this week. In the lawsuit, filed in New York Supreme Court on Monday, CBS claims that Three Lions Entertainment has stiffed the network on nearly $2.5 million from the September special, which aired on CBS.

NBCUniversal has decided to make the historic step of settling claims of violating labor laws through its unpaid internship program by agreeing to pay $6.4 million.

Actor Frank Silvero says that The Simpsons ripped off the Frankie Carbone character he played in 1990’s Goodfellas and he wants to be paid for it. In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, the actor says wants to be paid a lot — $250 million and more for the Springfield Mafia’s Louie.

A federal judge indicated a tentative decision that Dish Network isn’t violating copyright law in its offering of a service that allows subscribers to record primetime programs with commercials automatically deleted. U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee’s tentative ruling in favor of Dish Network’s AutoHop features isn’t a surprise. She has sided with the company in previous court rulings as Fox challenged the legality of the service.

On Wednesday, New York federal judge Alison Nathan considered a preliminary injunction against Aereo. At a hearing, attorneys for broadcasters and Aereo took turns arguing before a humbled judge who two years ago offered the prospect of revolution in the TV industry by denying an injunction on grounds that the relaying of individual copies of over-the-air TV signals constituted a private performance permissible under the Transmit Clause of the Copyright Act. This time, after the U.S Supreme Court concluded otherwise, Judge Nathan was more skeptical of Aereo’s arguments, even downright contemptuous at moments.

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A federal appeals court will review a ruling that struck down parts of Utah’s anti-polygamy law and was hailed as a landmark decision removing the […]

GREENVILLE, S.C.(AP) — A Greer man has won a $1,000 judgment against a host of television’s “American Pickers” over a piece of antique farm equipment. The Greenville News reported that […]

he college athletics playing field could soon see a big bucks stand off. Ten college football and basketball players filed a class action lawsuit in federal court in Tennessee last week seeking a big piece of the television money pie from ESPN, ABC, Fox, CBS, NBC as well as WME and IMG and more.

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Utah’s attorney general has decided to appeal a ruling that struck down parts of the state’s anti-polygamy law in what marked a significant victory for […]

A former employee of Clevealnd ABC affiliate WEWS has sued the station’s parent company, E.W. Scripps, saying an engineer had placed a hidden camera in the men’s bathroom this summer.

Looks like the producers of the brand new syndicated show from the bench could end up in front of a judge themselves. On Monday, Michael Eisner and his Tornante Co. were sued in a breach of contract and fraud compliant along with co-defendants Trifecta Entertainment and their CEO Hank Cohen for pushing a long time legal show director off the Judge Faith series he claims to have helped created.

CBS suffered a defeat in a Texas courtroom on Monday when a jury came back from deliberations and awarded $1.3 million to Personal Audio LLC over the TV network’s violation of the plaintiff’s patent on podcasting. The result happened after 18 months of litigation for the patent-holding company, which has endured bad press for conducting a wide legal campaign against those in the media and tech industry who digitally syndicate audio shows.

NEW YORK (AP) — A media monitoring company distributing television clips and snippets of transcripts to customers including the White House and Congress hasn’t violated broadcasters’ copyrights by letting its […]

Aereo’s fight for survival was dealt a setback on Thursday when a federal court rejected the streaming television service’s argument that it should be recognized as a cable TV service. The shuttered company, which the Supreme Court said in June was illegally retransmitting broadcast TV over the Internet, will have to take its case to a federal district court to continue its cable TV defense, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Former Vice President Al Gore is suing Al Jazeera America, saying the news network is withholding tens of millions of dollars that it owes for buying […]

NEW YORK — A New York judge has ordered figure skater Oksana Baiul to pay legal fees she caused NBC to incur when she sued the company. In awarding fees […]

Dish Network and its chairman, Charles Ergen, have been slapped with a lawsuit over the bankrupt wireless company LightSquared. In the lawsuit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Colorado, Harbinger Capital Partners accuses Ergen, Dish Network and others of engaging in “an illegal scheme of involving mail and wire fraud, banktruptcy fraud, torious inteference, and abuse of process.”

A Yankees fan has filed a $10 million lawsuit against two ESPN announcers contending they mocked him when he was caught on national television sleeping in his seat during a […]

Bolstered by a victory for broadcasters against Aereo last month, Fox on Monday challenged the legality of a Dish Network feature that allows subscribers to watch station feeds on devices outside the home. In oral arguments before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, Fox’s legal team sought to reverse a lower court ruling in which a federal judge refused to grant a preliminary injunction that would put an immediate halt to Dish’s Dish Anywhere service, concluding that it had not proven it would suffer irreparable harm if it continued.

The Supreme Court has given Pom Wonderful the go-ahead to sue Coca-Cola in a case expected to have significant ramifications for the food and beverage industry, in terms of how foods are named and marketed via labeling.

Former National Collegiate Athletic Association players seeking to share in $800 million in annual broadcast revenue are challenging their amateur status in a trial seen as potentially leading to teen athletes with agents, fewer teams and lawsuits by marching bands.

The National Association of Broadcasters is poised to ask the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a March FCC vote that requires broadcasters to unwind many of their advertising sales resource sharing arrangements, according to a source familiar with the matter.