Its just that this board follows Dish and so every hiccup and lawsuit regarding Dish is hashed about here. Comcast, TWC--Hey all the cable and sat companies out there have LOTS of lawsuits in which they are the defendants. Comcast is well know for its VERY hardball tactics. Gemstar TV Guide sued everybody a few years ago claiming patent infringement. While others settled, Dish choose to fight that one and WON! Dish also prevailed as a defendant in another lawsuit of patent infrequent very recently, but I forgot the name of the company who brought the suit. [Edit: I remember that it was Forgent who sued and several other companies settled, but Dish fought and won!]
Yes, Charlie believes that if he is in the "right" or is being leveraged with a lawsuit, meaning that the claim of the plaintiff is false, then he chooses to fight about 99% of the time and will take the case as far as it can go. However, contrary to what some people on this board say, Charlie has settled his share of cases. The Gemstar/TV Guide case was sent back for retrial, and 2 weeks later the parties settled. Now we have to live with the TV Guide bug, the TV guide channel and a few other things, and Charlie paid hundreds of millions, but Dish did get a "lifetime" license to TV technology. I know there were some other cases when he choose to settle, but I can't recall them. Direct TV has probably just as many suits as defendants as Dish does. Direct TV was also sued by a different company (they were sued by Gemstar/TV guide for this, as well) claiming that Direct TV infringed on the patent relating to their EPG. Dish was also sued by a yet different company claiming patent infringement of their EPG by channeling the license through Europe. Dish fought that one and WON that one, as well.
So, it is not your imagination that Dish keeps getting sued, but you need to expand your imagination to include the sad fact that all the cable and sat companies have just as many lawsuits slapped on them. Now, if you want to count the lawsuits that they all are slapped with when the drop a channel, then the suit is dropped once they agree to a price and reinstate the channel, then you've really got a lot of lawsuits. It is all a sad game.
