The California court that is hearing Fox’s challenge concerning DISH’s Hopper set-top-boxes and related AutoHop feature has issued a decision denying Fox’s request for a preliminary injunction.  The Hopper can be used to automatically record primetime programming from the four major broadcast television networks, and the AutoHop feature allows viewers to automatically skip the commercials during this programming.  Fox has raised several legal challenges to the Hopper and to the AutoHop feature, including claims that they violate Fox’s copyrights and Fox’s retransmission consent agreement with DISH.

The court has decided not to issue a preliminary injunction against DISH, finding that Fox had not made the necessary showing to obtain such relief at this stage of the case.  However, the court did find that “Fox has shown a likelihood of success on the merits” concerning certain aspects of its copyright and contractual arguments.  Fox has already appealed the decision to deny the injunction, and the appeal will be heard by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

A copy of the court’s decision, with redactions as proposed by the parties, can be found here.