Alan Friedman, a partner in the Litigation and Dispute Resolution practice, spoke with Law360 on the upcoming US Supreme Court review of American Broadcasting Companies Inc. et al. v. Aereo Inc. fka Bamboom Labs Inc. Aereo uses banks of tiny antennas to retransmit TV signals to individual users, a system the company claims allows it to avoid paying copyright royalties. Broadcast networks, however, allege this constitutes theft via illegal public performance broadcast simultaneously to potentially millions of paying customers. Lawsuits aimed at shutting down the service have met with varying success: judges in California and Washington, DC have ruled a similar services likely violates copyright law, while federal courts in New York and Massachusetts have said the opposite about Aereo. By taking the case, the Supreme Court will have the final say, resulting in a clean, uniform answer on what exactly constitutes a public performance of copyright-protected broadcast TV. As Alan explains, “It was critical that they take this case, because the uncertainty created by the different rulings would have affected too important an industry for too long.” (“Supreme Court Agrees to Take Aereo Streaming TV Case,” January 10, 2014)