Pegasus Satellite Television wins partial victory over DirecTV

By Jeff Pines

Washington, June 10 - Pegasus Satellite Television Inc. won a partial victory in its bid to prevent DirecTV from enticing its customers away.

In a June 10 order from the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Maine, judge James Hanes Jr. ruled that DirecTV could not use Pegasus' subscriber information to market direct service to its customers, but could market to anyone in general.

Bala Cynwyd, Pa.-based Pegasus markets DirecTV to its customers and has exclusive right to market and the revenue in its territory. It said that DirecTV began marketing to its customers shortly before the company filed for Chapter 11.

It filed an emergency motion seeking to prevent DirecTV from continuing to market to its customers.

"While we are disappointed that he did not also find that DirecTV's other marketing activity in our exclusive territories is a violation of the automatic stay, we continue to believe that this is a breach of our fundamental rights," said Ted Lodge, Pegasus' president in a news release.

"We intend to commence litigation on these matters shortly and will ask the judge to enforce our exclusive rights. We will continue to fight vigorously for our rights so that we may preserve for our employees, customers, business partners, creditors and shareholders the value we have created over the last ten years at Pegasus."

In a separate press release, DirecTV said it was pleased with the ruling since it could still market its services to Pegasus' customers.

Pegasus filed for Chapter 11 on June 2. Pegasus' Chapter 11 case number is 04-20878.

© 2015 Prospect News.
All content on this website is protected by copyright law in the U.S. and elsewhere. For the use of the person downloading only.
Redistribution and copying are prohibited by law without written permission in advance from Prospect News.
Redistribution or copying includes e-mailing, printing multiple copies or any other form of reproduction.