Proactive Investors - Paramount Global (NASDAQ:PARA) got a boost in its South Park legal battle with Warner Bros Discovery Inc (NASDAQ:WBD) in a ruling by New York judge Margaret Chan.
Warner Bros sued Paramount in February to try and enforce exclusive streaming rights to South Park on its HBO Max platform.
South Park Digital Studios and MTV Entertainment were also sued, with Warner accusing the trio of breaching its US$500 million exclusive licensing deal from 2019, covering 23 previous seasons and 30 new episodes.
However, Justice Chan ruled on Wednesday that no state consumer protection laws were violated.
This was because the complaint revolved around a “private contract dispute” that she said caused Warner to overpay for certain rights in the US$500 million deal.
When Paramount showed 'South Park: Post Covid' and 'South Park: The Streaming Wars' on its Paramount+ online streaming platform it had not engaged in “conduct that has caused harm to consumers”, she said, and didn’t engage in what Warner Bros had insisted was a “campaign of verbal trickery” to obscure who held the exclusive rights to the series.
Chan's ruling said: “Although plaintiff may take issue with defendants’ characterization of the Post-COVID Content and Streaming Wars Content as ‘events’ or ‘movies’ as an attempt to circumvent the terms of the 2019 Agreements, defendants’ literally true public representations are not actionable.”