ABC denied its request to halt sales of Dish's 'Hopper'

A U.S. court has denied ABC its request to stop Dish Network from selling its "Hopper" device.

The Hopper irks ABC because it lets TV viewers skip prime time broadcasts' commercials, Reuters reports.

ABC claimed Dish's Hopper could threaten revenue by being able to skip commercials as well as step on the TV network's rights to control programming while a lawsuit between the two continues.

Twenty-First Century Fox lost a similar case in July, after a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also refused to halt the Hopper.

Bloomsberg Businessweek notes that Dish feels their AutoHop feature doesn't violate any copyrights or contracts of TV networks. AutoHop lets viewers skip commercials only in broadcast shows.

Karen Hobson, an ABC spokesperson, said the company had no comments at the time on the ruling. In court documents, ABC said, "Dish engages in the nightly copying of all ABC's prime-time programming to help popularize an unauthorized video-on-demand service."

"Dish's actions strike at the heart of the advertising model that has supported free television since its beginning."

The Hopper, introduced in 2012, has a PrimeTime Anytime feature that is able to record all major networks' prime time shows and then keep them for eight days. The AutoHop feature then automatically skips ads in the broadcasts, unlike normal DVRs, where users manually have to skip past commercials.