Eleven days after a Salt Lake City jury awarded parental control tech maker ClearPlay  Inc. $469 million in its patent suit against Dish Network, a Utah federal judge threw out the verdict. 

Dish said in a statement that it "has stood firm in its belief that it did not infringe ClearPlay's patents, and is gratified by the court's ruling."

ClearPlay, which makes software allowing parents to skip through video content they find objectionable, sued Dish in 2014, alleging that commercial-skipping "AutoHop" features in the pay TV company's Hopper DVR set-tops violate two of its patents. 

Dish said in a March 3 filing that its technology works differently from the technology in ClearPlay's patents. No reasonable juror, Dish claimed, would determine infringement. 

U.S. District Judge David Nuffer sided with Dish and tossed the verdict.

A Utah federal court has ruled that Dish Network must pay $469 million to parental-controls technology maker ClearPlay for violating two patents with the pay TV company's AutoHop commercial-skipping feature. 

ClearPlay makes technology that it says enables parents to automatically skip through video material they don't want their families to see, such as nudity. And let's just say ClearPlay is no stranger to the federal court system, having fought numerous battles over the last two decades, along with another small and similarly minded Utah company, VidAngel, to "filter" (i.e. alter) content it doesn't own. 

Its case against Dish dates back to 2014, when far more Dish subscribers were allegedly using infringed-upon patents to automatically skip commercials via the satellite TV company's Hopper DVR. 

In arriving at its verdict, the Salt Lake City court dismissed ClearPlay's assertion that Dish willfully infringed upon patents '970 and '779. 

In a statement issued following Friday's verdict, Dish declared, nothing is over. 

"Though disappointed by the jury's verdict, we thank the jurors for their service," Dish said. "We remain confident that we do not infringe ClearPlay's patents, and will pursue post-verdict relief from the trial court and, if necessary, on appeal."

The Parents Television Council is celebrating the news that content filterer ClearPlay has struck a deal with streaming platform Disney Plus to offer filtered and skipped versions of its content.

PTC has been focusing on streaming as the pandemic-struck world spends even more time entertaining itself online.

“We applaud ClearPlay and Disney+ for reaching an agreement to give parents greater control over the content their families consume," said PTC president Tim Winter. "Our research has shown that just because a content rating suggests a program is appropriate for children, that is often not the case. Even Disney+ allowed one ‘f-word’ into its release of PG-13-rated Hamilton, and families did not have the option to filter that word,” said PTC President Tim Winter."

ClearPlay already has automatic filtering deals with Netflix and Disney Plus.

PTC said that while such agreements are good, what would be better is if the Family Movie Act would be updated. Currently it allows consumers to do their own filtering of explicit content from the DVDs so long as it does not result in a new, changed, copy, which would violate copyright protections, but does not extend that to filtering streamed movies, which is done by ClearPlay.

PureFlix.com and ClearPlay announced this week that they are collaborating on a video filtering service that, they claim, will legally remove offensive language from a range of original content as well as licensed movies and TV shows.

They said ClearPlay’s playback filtering technology is designed to work with PureFlix.com’s library of more than 5,000 titles. PureFlix.com is a streaming service that focuses on “faith and family-based entertainment” and runs a Christian movie studio based in Scottsdale, Ariz.

The new filtering system is slated to become available to PureFlix.com subs in the spring of 2017. PureFlix.com supports several platforms, including Fire TV devices and iOS and Android smartphones and tablets, but initially the filtering technology will be designed to work on Roku players and “most” Web browsers.

PureFlix.com noted that most of its content is free of offensive language, but said “some conservative Christian families have a zero-tolerance policy for certain imagery and/or words.” An example is the series Heartland, which uses the word “hell” on occasion.

“Working with ClearPlay enables us to further fulfill our promise of no language, sex or violence surprises with our faith and family-focused content,” PureFlix.com CEO Greg Gudorf, said in a statement. “A portion of our customer base--who have very strict personal guidelines on what they deem appropriate--has spoken and we’ve listened.”

PureFlix and ClearPlay announced their deal just days after a judge told VidAngel, a service that specializes in content filtering, to temporarily stop circumventing copyright protections on DVDs or streaming any of that content over the Internet.

RELATED: Court Blocks VidAngel Video Filtering Service

VidAngel, which is also looking to distribute original content, has pledged to take its fight to the Supreme Court.

http://www.multichannel.com/news/content/vidangel-distribute-original-content/409665