The commercials, which star Jessica Simpson and William Shatner, sparked a lawsuit by Time Warner Cable which charged that DIRECTV made a false claim by saying its HD picture and service was superior to cable.
DIRECTV must stop airing the ads until the lawsuit's proceedings are finished, ruled U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain.
A DIRECTV spokesman told the Associated Press late Monday that the judge's ruling only means that the HDTV ads cannot air in Time Warner markets.
“However, we will continue to aggressively market our better overall picture quality, which is permitted by the court’s opinion,” the spokesman said. “It’s obvious their strategy is to fight with us in the courts since they can’t compete with our superior product in the marketplace. We are confident we will prevail on both fronts.”
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Judge Swain ruled that DIRECTV could continue to state that its overall picture quality is better than Time Warner because it's unclear that its digital lineup is not better than cable's mix of digital and analog, according to the Associated Press.
The AP reports that the judge also rejected Time Warner's request that DIRECTV be forced to air an ad correcting its "false claim."
Jessica Simpson from the DIRECTV HD commercial.
But Swaim said Time Warner had demonstrated that DIRECTV's commercials saying its high-def programming was better than cable were false.
The lawsuit was filed late last year and the two companies have butted heads over how to handle the dispute.
In December, DIRECTV changed one commercial starring Ms. Simpson that said the satcaster offered the best High-Definition TV picture on the market. The new spot ran a different tagline: "For a HDTV picture that can't be beat."
The change was made after Time Warner filed the false claim lawsuit. The cable operator said it provides "exactly the same screen resolution" as DIRECTV's HDTV picture.
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