One thought on “Patents, Trademarks, Copyrights Explained”
Not sure where this should go, but I thought it was important and fell under some Intellectual Property subject header. Tomorrow, the Supreme Court will be hearing oral arguments on a case that is rather close to our hearts as an entrepreneurship class: the Aereo case. Aereo could be a disruptive innovator on its way up. They are a NYC based company with a very simply business model: for about 8 bucks a month, they re transmit/rebroadcast over the air television content to your tv, computers, etc. They do not, however, pay a cent in royalty fees to any major network. So the networks sued them, of course. Thats not surprising. What is surprising, however, is that Aereo won in the district court and the Second Circuit. To the extent that the Court’s opinion could have massive reverberations in the world of copyright, the case bears striking resemblance to the Sony. The key difference is that while Sony argued for fair use exception, here Aereo is arguing that their rebroadcast is not a “public performance” under the relevant copyright statute and therefore not infringement of any of the Network’s 106 copyrights (basically because each user has their own assigned antenna).
Disruptive innovator or exploitation of legal ambiguity? What it is, they are certainly ruffling a few established institution’s feathers. It remains to be seen whether the same irony that we saw post-Sony will be born out after Aereo. Even if Aereo loses, could a business find a way to provide the same service to the benefit of consumers and the cable networks like Betamax ended up benefiting the film industry? I hope so–I, for one, am tired of paying an arm and a leg for 500 channels when all I want to watch Kentucky Basketball 6 months out of the year.
Oral arguments begin tomorrow at 11 am, 5 minutes after our class. I’m sure you will all be rushing to the nearest CSPAN equipped television at the end of class. Here is SCOTUS blog’s preview of the case:
Not sure where this should go, but I thought it was important and fell under some Intellectual Property subject header. Tomorrow, the Supreme Court will be hearing oral arguments on a case that is rather close to our hearts as an entrepreneurship class: the Aereo case. Aereo could be a disruptive innovator on its way up. They are a NYC based company with a very simply business model: for about 8 bucks a month, they re transmit/rebroadcast over the air television content to your tv, computers, etc. They do not, however, pay a cent in royalty fees to any major network. So the networks sued them, of course. Thats not surprising. What is surprising, however, is that Aereo won in the district court and the Second Circuit. To the extent that the Court’s opinion could have massive reverberations in the world of copyright, the case bears striking resemblance to the Sony. The key difference is that while Sony argued for fair use exception, here Aereo is arguing that their rebroadcast is not a “public performance” under the relevant copyright statute and therefore not infringement of any of the Network’s 106 copyrights (basically because each user has their own assigned antenna).
Disruptive innovator or exploitation of legal ambiguity? What it is, they are certainly ruffling a few established institution’s feathers. It remains to be seen whether the same irony that we saw post-Sony will be born out after Aereo. Even if Aereo loses, could a business find a way to provide the same service to the benefit of consumers and the cable networks like Betamax ended up benefiting the film industry? I hope so–I, for one, am tired of paying an arm and a leg for 500 channels when all I want to watch Kentucky Basketball 6 months out of the year.
Oral arguments begin tomorrow at 11 am, 5 minutes after our class. I’m sure you will all be rushing to the nearest CSPAN equipped television at the end of class. Here is SCOTUS blog’s preview of the case:
http://www.scotusblog.com/2014/04/argument-preview-free-tv-at-a-bargain-price/