Legendary Antitrust Lawyer Max Blecher, Top Supreme Court Advocate Peter K. Stris, Joining VidAngel's Legal Dream Team

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 29, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- VidAngel, the market-leading entertainment platform empowering users to filter language, nudity, violence, and other content from movies and TV shows, announced today that it has added two specialist firms to its all-star legal team defending the lawsuit brought against the company by Disney and three other Hollywood studios. The studios are seeking to prevent the company from allowing families to filter sex, violence, obscenity, and other content from what they watch in the privacy of their homes as authorized under the Family Movie Act.

VidAngel's legal team, which already includes top Hollywood litigation firm Baker Marquart LLP as well as general counsel David W Quinto, a leading intellectual property attorney who made a name for himself as guardian of the ©Oscars for three decades, is now adding both Stris & Maher LLP and Blecher Collins & Pepperman. Leading the Stris & Maher team will be firm co-founder Peter K. Stris, one of the nation's most successful appellate advocates. Stris argued and won two Supreme Court cases in the last year alone. In 2014 he was ranked by Reuters as one of the nation's 66 most influential Supreme Court practitioners; last year Law 360 ranked him as one the top three Supreme Court advocates and Empirical SCOTUS ranked him as one of the top two.  The Blecher Collins & Pepperman team will be led by founding partner Max Blecher, who has won numerous landmark cases frequently cited as authority in antitrust lawsuits and other areas of complex litigation.

"We've been approached by leading legal minds from around the nation, folks who understand that the Family Movie Act absolutely makes a service like ours lawful, and that Disney and its three studio allies are on the wrong side of the law. With 60 million Americans looking for a service like VidAngel, we absolutely believe we will prevail in this case. That's why we are thrilled to welcome Max Blecher and Peter Stris, renowned attorneys whose collective work has literally reshaped jurisprudence in America," said Neal Harmon, CEO of VidAngel.

"Like many disruptively innovative companies, VidAngel has become a target, and our firm has now been engaged because VidAngel is planning for a long fight against the studios' high-priced legal talent," said Peter Stris, co-founder of Stris & Maher. "We look forward to being a part of an unprecedented team of attorneys who have banded together because we believe in the rights of families to watch what they want in their own homes."

"The studios' repeated attempts to foreclose any means for VidAngel to offer its filtering service to families exposes the studios to significant liability," said Max Blecher, founder of Blecher Collins & Pepperman.

The Stris and Blecher firms will assist VidAngel's mainstay defender, Baker Marquart, which in just a few years has developed a reputation for winning high profile copyright infringement litigations. Peter K. Stris of Stris & Maher will be assisted by Elizabeth Brannen, formerly the director of intellectual property for Barnes & Noble, and by Brendan Maher, an expert in evidence and procedure.

Max Blecher's legal victories include ABC International Traders v. Matsushita Electric, Image Technical Services v. Eastman Kodak, Syufy Enterprises v. The Federal Government, L.A. Coliseum v. The NFL, Handgards v. Ethicon (Johnson & Johnson), National Communications Association v. AT&T Corp., and ITT v. GTE & AT&T. Blecher will spearhead VidAngel's antitrust counterclaims against the studios.  Blecher's legal team includes Donald R. Pepperman and Taylor C. Wagniere.

VidAngel shocked the legal world last month with its announcement that legendary Hollywood intellectual property attorney David W. Quinto—previously a partner at powerhouse firms Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP and Davis Wright Tremaine LLP—had joined VidAngel to spearhead its defense of the lawsuit brought by Disney and three other Hollywood studios. With more than three decades of experience in entertainment and intellectual property, including protecting the ©Oscars, Quinto has focused on copyright, trademark, trade secret, unfair competition, and Internet-based cases.

The next step in the case is a preliminary injunction hearing to be argued in the Central District of California federal court on October 24, 2016.

Contact: VidAngel Press Office, [email protected]

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SOURCE VidAngel, Inc.