The artificial intelligence start-up said that it collaborated with news organizations and that The Times, which accused it of copyright infringement, was not telling the full story.
The owners of the country’s major broadcast TV networks — ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox — had sued Locast in 2019, saying Locast violated their copyrights, and asked for the service to be shut down. After a decision against it, Locast suspended operations on Thursday.
Short-form streaming-video service Quibi, which is preparing to launch next month, faces claims that one of its core tech features infringes on another company’s intellectual property, according to documents describing the dispute.
Fox News doesn’t want the U.S. Supreme Court to review its copyright win against the media monitoring service TVEyes. On Wednesday, the cable news giant submitted its opposition to a cert petition and downplayed the stakes other than implying that a reversal of earlier decisions in the case would undercut the hundreds of millions of dollars invested in training journalists and gathering news.
Weigel Broadcasting, Chicago-based parent company of the popular Me-TV Network, is suing Los Angeles-based Pervasive TV for using the name ReachMe.TV. In a lawsuit filed this week in U.S. District Court, Weigel is claiming trademark infringement, unfair competition and deceptive trade practices by Pervasive, which shows its ReachMe.TV mobile entertainment network online and on screens at airports and hotels across the country.
Exclusives
ONZA Partners sued NBCUniversal and Sony Pictures Entertainment, claiming Timeless is an unauthorized version of its show El Ministerio del Tiempo (The Ministry of Time.)
Yesterday, CNN, CBS, NBCU, and other networks joined Fox by filing a friend of the court brief in its battle with TVEyes, a subscription based service that lets you “monitor” broadcast news.
Aereo CEO On Future Of Company, Industry
With oral arguments in the copyright challenge case between Aereo and broadcasters scheduled to go before the Supreme Court on Tuesday, Aereo founder and CEO Chet Kanojia talksabout the his company, the case and the competition.
With the Supreme Court poised to take up American Broadcasting Companies v. Aereo on April 22, Aereo today announced it has launched ProtectMyAntenna.org. The site, Aereo says, offers court briefs, amicus briefs and court decisions related to the Supreme Court case as well as registration for updates.
The Supreme Court disclosed Wednesday, in routine entries on its docket, that Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., will now be taking part in two cases from which he had held himself out earlier — both set for argument next week — including American Broadcasting Companies v. Aereo. Alito had not taken part when the court issued preliminary orders. No explanation was given, but it was assumed that he had financial investments that made his recusal necessary. The announcement ends concerns over a tie.
The Supreme Court hears from amici curiae looking to save the digital upstart’s business from legal challenge.
Aereo may have agreed with broadcasters late last year that the best venue for their ongoing legal “war of attrition” is the Supreme Court. But as Wednesday’s response brief (read it here) to the plaintiffs reveals, that’s all the two sides agree on in this case
There’s no “Plan B” for Aereo: It either wins its copyright battle with broadcasters in the Supreme Court battle or it disappears from the video landscape, CEO Chet Kanojia says.
The Justice Department is taking an extra step to bolster its support of TV networks in their U.S. Supreme Court case argument that Aereo is illegally retransmitting local TV station signals. U.S. Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr., who previously filed a friend of the court brief siding with broadcasters, is now asking to be allowed to argue his view endorsing TV networks stance during high court oral arguments in the case April 22.
CBS CEO Leslie Moonves continued to downplay the threat posed by Aereo — the Internet startup facing a showdown with broadcasters at the Supreme Court — saying the Eye could deliver its own “over-the-top” service.
A federal appeals court denies a stay of an injunction preventing Aereo from operating in six states.
Two of the nation’s preeminent legal experts on copyright law are siding with broadcasters in their legal fight against Aereo, a start-up service that transmits local television signals via the Internet.
The Solicitor General of the U.S. put his name and that of the Obama administration solidly in the anti-Aereo camp with an amicus brief (read it here) filed with the Supreme Court today.
Lots Of Action Soon In SC’s ‘Aereo’ Case
February has been a busy month in the pending ABC v. Aereo Supreme Court (SC) case and there’s plenty on tap for March and April. Here’s a summary of the activity and a preview of what’s next in the case that will decide whether Aereo’s TV station retransmission business is legal or not.
Less than a week after being slapped with a six-state injunction, the Barry Diller-backed streaming service on Tuesday has won a 14-day reprieve — a move that will not please broadcasters who thought they’d scored their biggest legal win yet over Aereo.
In their opening brief to the Supreme Court, broadcasters challenge the legality of Aereo but also say that a win for the start-up streaming service would be “deeply problematic” and force them to reconsider the quality and quantity of shows on free, over-the-air TV.
Aereo Stumbles In Utah On Way To SCOTUS
Aereo’s path became rocky this week, when a federal judge in Utah dropped a boulder in its path. The resulting sound was that of a thousand tiny antennas splintering against Utah red sandstone, with the judge granting a preliminary injunction prohibiting Aereo from operating in Utah, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Wyoming. The most notable aspect of Judge Kimball’s decision, however, is that he had little difficulty concluding that Aereo’s service was exactly the type of copyright infringement Congress intended to prohibit in enacting the 1976 Copyright Act.
District Judge Dale Kimball ruled Wednesday in Salt Lake City that Aereo’s retransmission of video signals is “indistinguishable from a cable company” and blocked it from operating in several Western states, at least until the U.S. Supreme Court takes up a related case in April. He said that if Aereo continued to do business, it would damage broadcasters’ ability to negotiate with legitimate licensees, siphon viewers away from their websites and subject them to potential piracy.
The broadcasters and Aereo will argue their case before the Supreme Court on April 22 at 11 a.m., the court announced today. The court agreed on Jan. 10 to hear arguments on the petition that ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and several other broadcasters submitted on Oct. 11, 2013.
More billable hours for broadcasters’ and Aereo’s lawyers. The U.S. District Court will hear broadcasters’ motion for a preliminary injunction against the streaming service on Tuesday – even as the U.S. Supreme Court plans to look at the copyright infringement allegations against Aereo. If the Utah court sides with broadcasters then its decision would apply to six states that make up the 10th Circuit.
In a motion to intervene, Alki David’s company says that it will be impacted by the high court’s ruling, but that the streaming service has an “incentive” not to represent its interest.
TV broadcasters that are suing Aereo in Utah are asking a judge to ban the service from operating immediately — without waiting for the Supreme Court to rule on the company’s legality.
Streaming TV service FilmOn X suffered another setback in court this week, when an appellate panel said it won’t rule on the company’s request to lift an injunction against it until after the Supreme Court decides whether Aereo is legal. The order, issued on Thursday by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, leaves FilmOn X unable to stream TV shows in the U.S., except for three states: New York, Vermont and Connecticut. The three-judge panel that stayed FilmOn X’s appeal didn’t state a reason for its decision.
Broadcasters will get a U.S. Supreme Court hearing in their fight to stop Aereo Inc., the company that is threatening the industry’s decades-old business model by selling live television programming over the Internet. The justices today agreed to hear an appeal by media companies including ABC, Fox, NBCUniversal and CBS.
Aereo says in court papers filed late last week that it “has a direct interest” in FilmOn X’s appeal, given that any appellate decision about FilmOn X “could affect the ability of Aereo and other ‘cloud computing’ Internet services to expand their technology offering to consumers.”
The federal judge who prohibited FilmOn X from operating didn’t adequately consider the “public interest in innovation,” a coalition of nonprofits argue in new court papers. The groups — Public Knowledge, Electronic Frontier Foundation and Engine Advocacy — criticize the reasoning of U.S. District Court Judge Rosemary Collyer, who issued an injunction against FilmOn X earlier this year.
Aereo will not fight broadcasters’ motion to have the Supreme Court hear their case against the streaming company. In a statement today, founder and CEO Chet Kanojia said he hoped the Supreme Court would decided the case on its merits. The court has not yet decided whether it will hear the networks’ case.
Online video company Aereo poses a threat to over-the-air broadcast services, the TV company Hearst says in new court papers. Hearst, which owns the ABC affiliate WCVB in Boston, makes the argument as part of its attempt to convince the First Circuit Court of Appeals to ban Aereo from operating.
The federal judge who recently prohibited online video company FilmOn X from operating “misunderstands FilmOn X’s technology and misinterprets the plain language of the Copyright Act,” the start-up argues in papers filed with a federal appellate court.
FilmOn X Goes On Offensive, Sues WWCI
FilmOn X, which recently lost battles over its streaming service in Washington and Los Angeles, is hoping for better luck in federal court. Last week, the streaming service filed an action against noncommercial WWCI in Illinois, where the startup is asking for a declaratory judgment that it doesn’t infringe copyright.
When it lost a summary injunction back in September, the network said it wasn’t done trying to get Dish Network’s Hopper service shut down and on Wednesday ABC took another swing at it. In a brief dated Nov. 12 and filed yesterday (read it here) with the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, ABC and Disney Enterprises went after the satellite provider’s ad-jumping DVR service again.
The National Football League and Major League Baseball are urging the Supreme Court to grant broadcasters’ petition to hear their challenge to the legality of Aereo, the startup that features unauthorized streams of local broadcast signals. After the TV networks filed a petition to the high court last month, the NFL and MLB filed an amicus brief last week arguing that if Aereo prevails, it would mean sports programming would likely migrate to cable. Broadcasters argue that Aereo undermines their ability to collect retransmission fees from cable and satellite operators.
