The High Court has just decided that it won’t grant special leave to Optus to appeal the ruling in the case between the NRL and the telco. That means it loses, and the carrier’s mobile streaming service, TV Now, does infringe on copyright. And Optus was having such a good week.
According to ZDNet, the Full Bench of the High Court of Australia said that the appeal wouldn’t be heard as it had little to no chance of success.
If you’re unfamiliar with the case, the National Rugby League (NRL) took Optus to court way back at the start of the year over TV Now — a service that let you record TV shows to the cloud and stream them back to your mobile device with a minimal delay.
The NRL said that the ability to record, store and playback its exclusive content minutes after it had gone live on other networks was copyright infringement, and a legal rumble ensued.
Optus won the initial bout, with a court deciding that the service was pretty much the same as someone taping something off the telly at home.
That verdict was later overturned, and Optus appealed to the High Court. That’s what has come down today: a verdict against the appeal, meaning that TV Now does infringe on copyright. [ZDNet]