Agreeing with what it called the “puffery defense,” a federal appeals court ruled Thursday that DirecTV was within its rights to grossly understate the quality of a competitor’s product.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan also upheld Judge Laura Taylor Swain’s decision to block DirecTV from running ads in which Jessica Simpson and William Shatner say DirecTV’s high definition service is better than Time Warner Cable’s.