Viamedia Does Not Want SCOTUS To Shut Down Its Comcast Case

Viamedia urged the US Supreme Court not to shut down its monopolization lawsuit against Comcast, reported Bloomberg Law. 

The case is over the TV ad placement market, Viamedia claims the federal appeals court “meticulously followed”case law in greenlighting claims that the telecom ended their business deals for anti-competitive reasons.

“The appeals court adhered rigorously to this court’s precedents, decided no issue in conflict with any other circuit, and broke no new antitrust ground,” Viamedia says in a brief filed Tuesday. “Comcast does not and cannot claim that this case-specific holding is in tension with any decision of this court.”

The case returned to the Chicago federal court for trial-level proceedings after it was revived in February by a divided US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, which refused to reconsider its ruling.

The suit accuses Comcast of leveraging its control over its “interconnect”—the centralized advertising marketplace—to force rival telecoms to boycott the ad coordination services offered by Viamedia, its sole competitor in that arena.

Comcast also refused to let Viamedia use the interconnect at all, the suit claims. The two tactics allegedly combined to drive it out of the TV ad placement markets in Chicago, Detroit, and Hartford, Connecticut.

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