Texas Court Denies TVAddons’ Request to Dismiss US Piracy Lawsuit

• American satellite and broadcast provider Dish Network targeted two players in the Kodi add-on ecosystem.
• ZemTV and TVAddons were accused of copyright infringement by Dish Network.
• A Texas court disagreed to dismiss the piracy lawsuit, which means the case will go on.

Last year, Dish Network targeted two popular third-party add-on providers in the Kodi ecosystem for copyright infringement. TVAddons and ZemTV were accused of copyright infringement by Dish. Both the accused parties filed for dismissal of the piracy lawsuit claiming both parties are not connected to Texas. Hence the case should have been dissolved according to the defending attorneys. The court disagreed with the defense attorneys and had allowed the case to go on.

The case was filed in Texas, but neither of the two defendants lives there or in the US. The owner of TVAddons Adam Lackman is from Canada while ZemTV’s developer is from the UK. Their limited connection to the state of Texas was held as the reason for the case to be dismissed, and both of them applied for a motion to dismiss the case in January.

Image Courtesy of TorrentFreak

“Lackman and Durrani have never been residents or citizens of Texas; they have never owned property in Texas; they have never voted in Texas; they have never personally visited Texas; they have never directed any business activity of any kind to anyone in Texas […], and they have never earned income in Texas,” the motion states.

Dish replied to the motion, submitting hundreds of pages of evidence that documented TVAddons and ZemTV’s ties to the United States for their respective businesses. Dish pointed out that more than a third of TVAddons’ business was from the US with 34% of the traffic being generated there. Last week District Judge Vanessa Gilmore ruled in favor of Dish, denying the claims of both TVAddons and ZemTV.

There is no additional information on why the motion was denied by the judge according to TorrentFreak. It is now certain that the case will move forward. The lawsuit is one of many Kodi-related lawsuits that are ongoing. Dragon Box was sued by Netflix, Amazon and several other studios from Hollywood earlier this year. Tickbox, another Kodi-powered box manufacturer, was also sued by the same companies, and there is no verdict on the case yet. Kodi has been in the center of a lot of controversy over its pirate streaming boxes and the future of the platform is uncertain.