PROVO, Utah — The Utah-based video filtering service VidAngel has filed a petition seeking Chapter 11 protection under the Bankruptcy Code.
According to a press release from VidAngel issued Wednesday, the company is “engaged in a protracted legal battle” with several Hollywood studios including Disney, 20th Century Fox and others over the services they offer.
VidAngel CEO Neil Harmon issued a statement after the announcement, saying the Chapter 11 protection will allow the company breathing room to reorganize their business and seek a conclusion to the ongoing legal dispute.
In the meantime, VidAngel will continue to offer their existing filtering service. The full statement from Harmon is available below.
VidAngel initially offered filtered media through a streaming service, butearlier this year they tweaked their business model to filter content being distributed by established streaming services like Amazon.
In September of this year, VidAngel filed a lawsuit asking a judge to declare this newer service legal.
Chapter 11 protections shield a business from the threat of creditors’ lawsuits as they reorganize their finances. The reorganization plan must be accepted by a majority of the creditors involved.
The full statement from Harmon regarding Chapter 11 is below:
“We have filed a petition for relief under Chapter 11. It’s an important step to protect our company—as well as its creditors, investors, and customers—from the plaintiffs’ efforts to deny families their legal right to watch filtered content on modern devices. It also gives us breathing room to reorganize our business around the new streaming platform, promote and perfect the new technology, and seek a legal determination that the new system is fully legal and not subject to the preliminary injunction entered in California.
“It’s important for our fans to know that VidAngel will continue to offer our filtering service, and to add new content and new customers during the reorganization process. We are also actively hiring additional engineers to further accelerate the continued development of VidAngel. Our original series, Dry Bar Comedy, is exploding and has had over 16 million minutes viewed in the last 7 days. Our customers can filter movies on Amazon, Netflix, and HBO on Amazon, and we still have millions in the bank to fight this all the way.”
