Judge rules against broadcasters, denying injunction against Aereo TV

In March, a coalition of major broadcasters sued a New York City-based TV-streaming startup called Aereo, which the broadcasters said was stealing their content so users could watch TV online. Today, a Manhattan US District Judge ruled against the coalition, which includes ABC, CBS, NBCUniversal, and Fox, saying she would not order Aereo to stop distributing service to its customers while the trial was ongoing.

When the coalition first brought the suit against Aereo, it claimed that the company was stealing its intellectual property by reprocessing broadcast signals that did not belong to Aereo and violating public performance rules, which are also subject to copyright law, by streaming live. Aereo, however, rebutted the claims, saying it only let users stream channels that were free to anyone with an antenna. Cleverly, the company kept enough antennas in its server room to assign each user a “personal antenna,” turning Aereo’s service into something more like “remote TV.”

Today, US District Judge Alison Nathan did not decide whether Aereo has been infringing upon the plaintiffs’ copyrights, but she did refuse to grant an injunction against the company, which would have halted its service indefinitely.

Much of the judge’s decision delved into the specifics of Aereo’s system, saying that the only discrepancy in facts between the two sides rested on whether Aereo’s individual antennas each worked independently, or whether “Aereo’s antennas function collectively as a single antenna, aided by a shared metallic substructure.” While both sides brought forward experts to testify on how Aereo’s infrastructure worked, the judge wrote that Aereo’s use of multiple antennas “reinforce[s] the conclusion that the copies created by Aereo’s system are unique and accessible only to a particular user, as they indicate that the copies are created using wholly distinct signal paths.”

Ultimately, Judge Nathan refused the coalition of broadcasters a preliminary injunction because the Court did not “believe that Plaintiffs will suffer the full magnitude of their claimed irreparable harm during the pendency of this litigation.” She spoke of the “balance of hardships” between the litigants as well, noting that while broadcasters would surely be affected in the long run due in part to “the difficulty of determining whether consumers have ‘cut the cord’ with their cable company due to Aereo’s service or for other reasons,” the broadcasters’ losses might not be as significant as Aereo’s might be if it were forced to close temporarily.

The federal judge wrote, “Aereo identifies several hardships that it will suffer should an injunction issue, the majority of which could not be remedied through the requirement of an injunction bond,” like loss of staff and inability to attract new capital. That means that until a decision in the copyright trial is reached, Aereo can keep servicing the New York area, and can continue growing.