Just some tidbits...
Today the court ruled on eight pending motions as "Motion moot - case settled" and closed the case. Another interesting read is an article in which Ergen opined on the case. In a nutshell, he didn't want this dispute to continuing through the courts (on appeal) for more years since it was obvious they were going to lose and it was a distraction from business operations. He also stated that he wished they had settled the Tivo case years earlier. Perhaps this signals a change in their "Litigate First" strategy. We shall see.
Source
Decisions by the judge gave Dish Network very little chance to win its lawsuit against AMC Networks and its Voom HD programming venture, leading to last month's $700 million settlement, Dish Network Chairman Charlie Ergen said.
Answering questions during Dish's third-quarter earnings call, Ergen said Tuesday Dish probably wouldn't have lost as much money as Voom was seeking-about $2.4 billion-if the case had gone to the jury.
But even after a verdict, the case would have gone on to appeal for another three or four years, and Ergen wanted to avoid that expense and distraction.
"Based on our experience in TiVo, we ended up with TiVo where we probably could have ended up five years earlier," Ergen said, referring to a $500 million settlement Dish made with TiVo after five years of legal wrangling. "And we wasted a lot of time for lawyers and management time on something that probably could have been settled."
As part of the settlement, Dish agreed to a new distribution deal with AMC which had been taken down over the summer. With AMC's networks off the satellite service, Dish lost subscribers during the quarter. Without the AMC dispute, it might have gained subscribers, Ergen said.
Analysts believe Dish paid AMC a bigger subscriber fee that it would have if it weren't for the lawsuit.
"If AMC continues to produce shows like Walking Dead, which is kind of off the charts in terms of people viewing it, then that will be a fair deal for us. If they stub their toe, then we probably paid too much for their programming going forward,"
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