Court Dismisses DISH’s $25 Million IPTV Piracy Lawsuit Against UK Hosting Provider

A California federal court dismissed the copyright infringement lawsuit DISH Network filed against hosting provider Innetra, finding it lacked personal jurisdiction over the UK company. DISH accused the company of providing infrastructure to pirate IPTV operations while ignoring DMCA takedown requests. The case was dismissed without prejudice, leaving open the possibility of future action elsewhere.

As pirate IPTV services have continued to grow in recent years, TV broadcasters and distributors have intensified their efforts to combat the problem.

Pay TV provider DISH Network, in tandem with the International Broadcaster Coalition Against Piracy (IBCAP), has been particularly active on this front, filing a series of lawsuits in the United States.

DISH vs. Innetra

In one of these cases, DISH last year filed a copyright infringement complaint against UK hosting provider ‘Innetra PC’ at a California federal court, accusing the company of aiding widespread copyright infringement while ignoring takedown requests.

Based on IBCAP’s evidence, the complaint alleged that Innetra provided essential infrastructure for pirate streaming services, including the separately targeted Lemo TV and Kemo IPTV, as well as Honeybee, Xtremehd, and Caliptostreams.

In its complaint, DISH argued that Innetra could not rely on safe harbor protection, as it largely ignored hundreds of infringement notices. Additionally, Innetra allegedly failed to designate a DMCA agent and had no policy for terminating repeat infringers.

The complaint listed 171 copyrighted works and requested damages of up to $25 million against Innetra and its general partner, Elna Paulette Valentin was also named as a defendant personally.

Innetra Requested Dismissal

In July last year, Innetra responded with a motion to dismiss. The company argued that the court lacked jurisdiction, as the UK company has minimal to no contacts with the United States or California.

Among other things, Innetra said it had no U.S. servers and had signed up just one paying U.S. customer since its founding, whose account was only active for two months.

The hosting provider did not disregard the idea of a legal battle entirely. Instead, it said that if DISH insisted on filing a lawsuit, it could do so in the United Kingdom, not in the United States.

“Dish may pursue its dispute in the United Kingdom, where Innetra is located. Dish, however, may not force foreign defendants that lack minimum contacts with the United States, let alone California, to defend themselves in the United States,” Inntra wrote in its motion last year.

Court Dismisses $25 Million Lawsuit

After the motion to dismiss was filed, the court allowed DISH sixty days of jurisdictional discovery before ruling on the motion to dismiss. However, that proved not to be enough to overcome the jurisdiction challenges.

Last week, Judge Noël Wise granted Innetra’s motion to dismiss, concluding that DISH had failed to demonstrate specific personal jurisdiction over the UK hosting company. The case was dismissed without prejudice.

The court applied the “purposeful direction” test established in recent Ninth Circuit case law, which requires a plaintiff to show that a defendant made regular sales in the forum and consciously cultivated a customer base there. However, based on the evidence provided by DISH, that is not the case here.

At the time of the alleged infringement, in 2024, Innetra had no U.S. customers at all. Two American customers briefly appeared in 2025: one paid $682 over two months before cancelling, and the other signed up for nine days without purchasing anything. The court described these contacts as “scant, fleeting, and attenuated.”

DISH also argued that Innetra’s peering arrangements with NTT and Lumen showed a deliberate effort to reach U.S. users. However, evidence provided during discovery showed that Innetra contracted with the German and Dutch branches of these companies, not their U.S. affiliates. Innetra did not use U.S.-based servers from these companies.

Finally, the court was not convinced by DISH’s evidence that nearly 49,000 instances of pirate IPTV services used Innetra’s infrastructure to transmit content into the U.S. Since these pirate services were making the connection to U.S. users, not Innetra, the hosting provider is not responsible for jurisdictional purposes.

What’s Next?

Because the case was dismissed without prejudice, DISH is allowed to refile the case, potentially with extra evidence. And as Innetra noted in its motion to dismiss, DISH can also file a lawsuit in the United Kingdom if they like.

For Innetra, putting up a defense turned out to be vital. After all, another DISH lawsuit against Ukraine-based hosting provider Virtual Systems recently showed that not responding in court can result in a multi-million-dollar default judgment.
For now, there is no sign of follow-up action against Innetra yet. However, DISH certainly continues its enforcement efforts elsewhere. Just last month, the company filed a fresh $21 million lawsuit against pirate IPTV operation DMTN, whose operator allegedly posed as Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan.

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A copy of U.S. District Court Judge Noël Wise’s order on the motion to dismiss is available here (pdf).

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Posted Friday 13 March 2026 at 6:30 am AEST (my time).

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