AT&T Sued for Stealing A Streaming News Technology System

• AT&T was accused by a startup of stealing a proprietary streaming-news technology system.
• The claim was made by My24hournews.com, a company that invented a system to deliver streaming news to computers, smartphones, and tablets.
• The case is My24HourNews.com v. AT&T, 18-cv-1647, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Georgia (Atlanta).

AT&T Corp. was sued by My24hournews.com which claims to have invented a system to deliver news streams to computers, smartphones, and tablets. The startup tech firm said in a lawsuit that AT&T used the technology in question without a proper license, which has forced My24hournews to take legal action.

According to the startup, AT&T Corp. had agreed to invest $100 million but violated agreements with the website. It is claimed that the telecom giant refused to fund My24’s launch and held the startup’s proprietary broadcast platform hostage.

Image Courtesy of Variety

According to Yahoo Finance’s coverage, this is the third time the Dallas-based company has been sued with the same complaint. The first case was dismissed in court while the second one was withdrawn by the startup company. According to AT&T Corp. spokesman Marty Richter, the third complaint lacks merit too.

The lawsuit comes right after Dallas-based AT&T started defending it's $85 billion mergers with Time Warner Inc. at a trial in Washington. The tech giant won approval for the merger in 2015 for its $48.5 billion of satellite-TV provider DirecTV. The Justice Department is trying to block the deal. According to the Justice Department, AT&T would hike prices for consumers by more than $400 million per year by making rival companies pay more for AT&T-owned Time Warner content.

The case is My24HourNews.com v. AT&T, 18-cv-1647, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Georgia (Atlanta) and will be put into motion in the coming weeks.