A US district court judge has ruled that DTH broadcaster Dish can continue to use its AutoHop and PrimeTime Anytime features on its ‘Hopper’ DVR, and refused network broadcaster ABC’s application to bar the applications when viewing its channels. Judge Laura Swain of the Southern District of New York, United States District Court, ruled in […]
MPAA Chairman Senator Chris Dodd joined Representatives Howard Coble, Adam Schiff, Marsha Blackburn and Judy Chu on Capitol Hill to release the results of a new study – Understanding the Role of Search in Online Piracy – that found that search engines play a significant role in introducing audiences to infringing movies and TV shows […]
SES has won the first stage of a bitter arbitration dispute with rivals Eutelsat over frequency rights at 28/28.5 degrees East. SES can now start transmissions on October 4th and make use of 500 MHz of bandwidth currently used by Eutelsat’s Eurobird-1/28A satellite. However, the squabble is far from over. While SES can next month […]
Despite well-publicised fears at the start of the week that the minimum 75 per cent acceptance level for Vodafone’s planned acquisition of German cable MSO Kabel Deutschland would not be reached by the first phase deadline of September 11th, the telco confirmed September 12th that the voluntary public tender offer has met the required acceptance […]
The Conservative MP for Hove Mike Weatherley has been made an unofficial adviser to UK Prime Minister David Cameron. As an unpaid adviser on intellectual property, he will report to the Prime Minister and ministers, focusing on enforcement issues relating to the creative industries. Weatherley worked in intellectual property in the music and film sectors […]
Google has released a report – How Google Fights Piracy – which covers the programmes, policies, and technologies it has put in place to combat piracy online. Writing in the Google Public Policy Blog, Fred von Lohmann, Legal Director, Copyright, notes that more music, video, text and software is being created on the Internet by […]
India’s public broadcaster Doordarshan has won support from the Indian Information & Broadcasting Ministry in its request to gain ‘must carry’ status on the country’s cable networks. The Ministry has issued a mandatory notification to the cable MSOs that 21 Doordarshan channels, plus 3 others, must be carried once the MSOs have digitised their circuits. […]
BT has been reprimanded by the UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for its TV commercial which made speed claims about its fibre optic broadband service, BT Infinity, based on out-of-date data. In an advert that featured a student uploading his photograph to a dating site while his flatmate purchased concert tickets instantaneously, BT claimed that […]
A group of broadcasters has won a preliminary injunction against web TV service FilmOn in a federal court in Washington DC. Judge Rosemary Collyer said: “This Court concludes that the Copyright Act forbids FilmOn X from retransmitting Plaintiffs’ copyrighted programs over the Internet. Plaintiffs are thus likely to succeed on their claim that FilmOn X […]
ViaSat is a satellite broadband supplier serving consumers over North America. It already has an action running against Space Systems/ Loral, a satellite builder, alleging that SS/L has misused patents granted to ViaSat for its High Throughput broadband satellite – which SS/L built. Now ViaSat is alleging additional patent infringements against SS/L. The new action […]