Aereo Fallout Begins: Fox Uses Ruling To Attack Dish's Mobile Streaming Service

from the because-welcome-to-this-new-mess dept

We've been saying that the Aereo ruling is going to create a litigation headache for a number of companies... and here we go. You may recall that a bunch of TV broadcasters have sued Dish over its attempts to provide innovative features to consumers, such as its Dish AutoHopper and its Dish Anywhere streaming offering. So far, those lawsuits have gone nowhere and fast. But Fox sees renewed life in its effort to shut down innovation thanks to the Supreme Court's unfortunate "looks like a duck" test.

Within hours of Wednesday's ruling, Fox had run to the 9th Circuit appeals court with the news. The 9th Circuit had previously rejected Fox's attempt to shut down the Dish technology, but Aereo has renewed its hopes of killing some innovation:

Fox's lawyers believe the Aereo ruling strengthens their case against Dish. In a letter to the court Richard Stone, partner at Jenner & Block, wrote that the supreme court had ruled Aereo's service constitutes an "unauthorized public performance of Fox's copyrighted works."

"Dish, which engages in virtually identical conduct when it streams Fox’s programming to Dish subscribers over the internet – albeit also in violation of an express contractual prohibition – has repeatedly raised the same defenses as Aereo which have now been rejected by the supreme court," he wrote.

Stone highlighted that the court had specifically rejected Aereo's assertion that it is "merely and equipment provider" and that Aereo's subscribers were the ones transmitting content.

Get ready, because Aereo is going to get cited a lot by the legacy entertainment industry as they quickly seek to destroy innovation.

Filed Under: autohopper, copyright, dish anywhere, dvr, looks like a duck, remote viewing, streaming
Companies: aereo, dish, fox