Dish Network's ad-skipping Hopper DVR likely doesn't violate copyright law and should remain on the market, a federal appeals court ruled today.

TV networks have been attacking the Hopper with great ardor in the past year. Fox and NBCUniversal sued the Hopper in 2012, asking a judge for an order to get the Hopper off the market while a trial was pending. The request for a preliminary injunction was denied in November, but the networks appealed. Now that appeal has been decided in Dish's favor.

Meanwhile, Fox celebrated the 2013 edition of the Hopper with a fiery court motion blasting the new box, insisting use of the device's features isn't "consumer place-shifting"—rather, "it is piracy."

At CBS, the legal department took the remarkable move of censoring its own news team in the name of fighting Dish. CNET editors chose the Hopper as the "Best in Show" at this year's CES convention, but that decision was squelched by CBS lawyers. The brouhaha resulted in CES taking the job away from CNET altogether and the resignation of a well-known CNET reporter.

The rhetoric may be getting hotter, but the ad-skipping DVR is going to stay on the market. The US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit upheld the lower court judge's decision to side with DISH, saying that Fox "had not established a likelihood of success on this claim." At the end of the day, the copies on a Hopper DVR are made "at the user's command," the three-judge panel noted. Even though many details of the copying are up to Dish—it's up to Dish how long the copies are kept, for example—they are still fundamentally copies made by the user, not by Dish.

Even better for Dish, the appeals court found that it's likely to succeed on a fair use defense. Dish customers make home, noncommercial copies, and those are legal—just like the home copies made on VCR tapes that were at issue in the famous 1984 Betamax case.

In one section, the court reminds Fox that the ads it is complaining about being skipped aren't even its own content:

Commercial-skipping does not implicate Fox’s copyright interest because Fox owns the copyrights to the television programs, not to the ads aired in the commercial breaks. If recording an entire copyrighted program is a fair use, the fact that viewers do not watch the ads not copyrighted by Fox cannot transform the recording into a copyright violation. Indeed, a recording made with PrimeTime Anytime still includes commercials; AutoHop simply skips those recorded commercials unless a viewer manually rewinds or fast-forwards into a commercial break. Thus, any analysis of the market harm should exclude consideration of AutoHop because ad-skipping does not implicate Fox’s copyright interests.

The lawsuit against Dish can still move forward, but in the meantime, the Hopper will remain on the market. The case is being litigated in a Los Angeles federal court.

“This decision is a victory for American consumers, and we are proud to have stood by their side in this important fight over the fundamental rights of consumer choice and control," Dish's general counsel said in an e-mailed statement.

In a statement to The Wrap, Fox emphasized that there was a "very high" bar to win a preliminary injunction. The network added: "This is not about consumer choice or advances in technology. It is about a company devising an unlicensed, unauthorized service that clearly infringes our copyrights and violates our contract."