Law and Innovation

(Article published in the ABA Section of Intellectual Property Law, International Associates Action Group Newsletter , p.15).   I nnovation continues to outpace the law. Since the last six years, the convergence of cloud-based products/services with the consumption and distribution of entertainment content is producing a large number of conflicts and legal uncertainty in the television industry. Indeed, the scope and bounds of copyright law remain ill-equipped to tackle this rapid pace of technological advancement. The question remains: are we not in presence of a “loophole” in the law?    Following the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in favor of the TV content owners ( American Broadcasting Companies, Inc., et al., Petitioners v. Aereo, Inc ., 573 U.S. ___ (2014)) concluding that “Aereo performs petitioners’ copyrighted works publicly” infringing this exclusive right by selling its subscribers a technologically complex service that allows them to watch TV programs

T he competition among video applications/market for content such as Netflix , Amazon, Hulu, YouTube, and traditional television is violent. The future of distribution in the entertainment industry is almost entirely digital; competitors are fighting to get most of the market shares. While online piracy has escalated as well , video streaming activity coming from legitimate online streaming services, such as Netflix, are a good reason for TV shows/movies fans to finally (and definitely) ban pirate sites. In just one week, the American provider of on-demand Internet streaming media has just expanded its European market with 5 new countries: France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland. The reason is simple. As noted by Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and CFO David Wells: “This launch into markets with over 60 million broadband households will significantly increase our European presence and raise our current international addressable market to over 180 million broadban