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Policy

TiVo claiming “billions” from Google

TiVo’s lawyers were busy again in the tiny town of Marshall, Texas (pop 23,523), where it likes to file its patent infringement cases. This goes back to 2009 when TiVo bought a championship steer for the record sum of $10,000 at the local county show, and renamed it TiVo. Two weeks later the jury awarded […]

October 17, 2012

Dish defence in VOOM case is “lies”

The gloves are coming off in the €2.4 billion battle in a New York courtroom between Cablevision/VOOM and EchoStar/DISH. Lawyer Orin Snyder, acting for Cablevision, told Judge Richard Lowe III that this past weekend’s enforced release of documents held by EchoStar showed that “the entire defense is a massive fraud. I am not mincing words,” […]

October 16, 2012

Judge slams EchoStar in VOOM litigation

EchoStar’s lawyers received a dressing down from Judge Richard Lowe III in a New York courtroom on October 12th, who told them bluntly: “Everybody involved in this litigation [for Dish] has no credibility when it comes to document exchange, when it comes to turning everything over [to the plaintiffs] you’ve been directed to turn over,” […]

October 15, 2012By Chris Forrester

India to toughen TV ‘Indecency Law’

India is to include TV channels into its existing ‘Indecent Representation of Women Act’ and to widen scope of the 1986 legislation to cover both satellite TV and even Internet activity. There have been examples of India’s censor getting involved in some TV programming, especially when movies are shown, and this has led to a […]

October 15, 2012By Chris Forrester

Canal+ constitutional appeal fails

Canal Plus’s appeal to France’s constitutional court claiming the regulator’s imposition of ‘remedies’ relating its 2007 takeover of TPS, has failed. The CSA has imposed the remedies because C+ failed to meet the conditions set at the time of the deal. The court ruled the competition authority did not have the power to impose disproportionate […]

October 12, 2012

MPA man to head Wiggin’s IP advice shop

UK media law firm Wiggin is opening its first international office in Brussels. The office will be headed up by Ted Shapiro, the Motion Picture Association’s current head of legal for Europe in Brussels. According to Simon Baggs, Wiggin’s head of content protection, the world of copyright is borderless and rapidly changing. “Our clients need […]

October 11, 2012By Colin Mann

Oz regulator will oppose Seven’s Foxtel bid

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has confirmed it will oppose the proposed acquisition by Seven Group Holdings (Seven) of the balance of shares that it does not already own in Consolidated Media Holdings (CMH). Seven owns 25.3 per cent of the shares in CMH and around 33 per cent of the shares in Seven […]

October 11, 2012

EC’s Kroes seeks single movie marketplace

Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda, has suggested that the European film industry should consider a single market that takes advantage of economies of scale, and reconsider release windows. Offering her thoughts on ‘Helping European films thrive’ as part of a Round Table on ‘Financing and distribution of European […]

October 10, 2012By Colin Mann

SeaChange wins patent case

SeaChange, the multi-screen video software company, has confirmed that a US District Court has ruled in its favour, rejecting allegations by Arris that SeaChange had violated a 2006 injunction. The dispute began in 2001, when n-Cube Corporation (whose interest was later acquired by Arris Group) filed suit alleging that SeaChange’s ITV video system infringed an […]

October 10, 2012

Huawei, ZTE ‘should be banned from US’

Chinese telecom groups Huawei and ZTE do pose a security threat a US Congress report has warned after an investigation into the two companies. It said the firms had failed to allay fears about their association with the Chinese government and military. The companies are among the world’s biggest makers of telecom networking equipment.”China has […]

October 8, 2012