Appeals Court Sides With Fox News in Case Against TVEyes

By Chris Ariens 

The U.S. Court of Appeals has ruled in favor of Fox News in a copyright infringement case going back nearly five years.

In 2013, Fox News sued the video monitoring service TVEyes arguing the digital monitoring platform illegally shares its copyrighted content. In 2014 a New York judge ruled partially in TVEyes’ favor, saying some of its functionality fell under the fair use doctrine. But today, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that “TVEyes has failed to show that the product it offers to its clients can be justified as fair use.”

“This is a significant win in the field of fair use law,” said Fox News outside counsel Dale Cendali. “In evaluating the remaining fair use factors, the Second Circuit held that TVEyes’ distribution of Fox’s audio visual content would ultimately be harmful to the media company’s business because it is being deprived of various forms of licensing revenue.”

Advertisement

TVEyes is a service that records and transcribes the content of local stations and national and international TV networks. It is used by a variety of industries, from financial services firms, to government agencies, to media companies, including this site.

“While we are disappointed by the decision, we continue to believe that TVEyes offers an irreplaceable public service to its customers, including elected officials and government agencies, the military, law enforcement and the news media itself, within the bounds of the law,” the company wrote in a statement. “We are in the process of evaluating the decision and considering our options.”

Advertisement