McCarthy Tétrault Files Amicus Brief On Behalf Of Rights Holders In The Aereo Case

On March 3, 2014, Steven Mason of McCarthy Tétrault filed an Amicus brief in the Supreme Court of the United States in the ABC, Inc. et al v. Aereo, Inc case, which will settle a long-standing controversy about the extent of the public performance right in U.S. copyright law.

Aereo's business model of re-transmitting TV broadcasts without a license has been contentious from its inception.  Similar unlicensed services have been held to infringe copyright. But the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a split decision in Wnet, 13 v. Aereo, Inc., 712 F. 3d 676 (2d Cir. 2013) that Aereo's system was not a public performance, because each transmission was of a unique copy of a work created at a user's request.