Optus Plans To Appeal TV Now Case


File this under expected/interesting: a fortnight after it lost a High Court battle with sporting bodies over its TV Now recording service, Optus has confirmed it will seek leave to appeal the decision in the High Court.

In a press statement, Optus CEO Paul Sullivan said that with cloud-based entertainment options proving increasingly popular, Australian providers needed legal certainty in order to remain competitive. The issue is sure to be closely fought, with both the AFL and NRL fighting against the service, claiming it undermines their extremely lucrative broadcast rights. No court date yet, but we’ll keep an eye out.

Full Optus statement below:

“Paul O’Sullivan, Optus Chief Executive said:

Today we can confirm we will appeal the TV Now decision in the High Court.

We believe the TV Now case is extremely important in deciding the future for innovation, consumer choice and competition. Increasingly, developments like cloud computing will see Australians using applications held online and wanting to store online rather than just using fixed hardware based in the home.

Australian consumers want legitimate access to content on any device regardless of the genre and we want to continue making the latest technologies available to Australians to meet this demand.

This is a very important public policy issue that needs to be determined by the highest court in the land, to give clarity to both consumers and the industry.

As innovations like TV Now are readily available in other parts of the world, Australia must remain globally competitive and embrace the rapid convergence of technologies as we head towards an NBN world.”