IceTV wins court battle with Channel 9

Channel 9 is owned by PBL Media, the same company that owns APC's publisher, ACP Magazines. It sued IceTV in May 2006 for copyright infringement of its program guides -- essentially, the TV guide that sets out its program times and descriptions.

IceTV was on the cusp of floating its business on the sharemarket when the lawsuit was filed, and it withdrew the public float after Nine's action.

IceTV's court defence, in a nutshell, was that it wasn't copying Nine's guide and was compiling its own guide based on a combination of watching TV and noting times, viewing various TV guides in different publications, and writing its own descriptions for shows.



The High Court ultimately supported IceTV's view, and went further, suggesting in its judgment that it is doubtful that program times and titles can even be copyrighted, since Nine did not create most of the titles of the shows in its guide. You can read the full ruling here.

The ruling is likely to see substantial costs awarded to IceTV, and will give its service legitimacy that has been under question until now.

It's big news for TV watchers in Australia too, as it will allow media centers and PVRs of all sorts to be able to access program guide information so shows can be scheduled by name (and recorded automatically in series) rather than by manually programmed timeslot.

Australian TV networks have been working on their own EPG called "Freeview" which will be broadcast using digital TV signals that already have the technical capability to carry an EPG, however details on the actual implementation of Freeview have, to date, been scarce.

There have also been suggestions that, although Freeview should work on any DVB-T set-top box, if a consumer wants a "Freeview" certified box, the manufacturer will need to disable ad-skipping capabilities. If this does end up being the case, technically savvy consumers will likely be able to avoid the limitations anyway, as manufacturers such as Beyonwiz have already said they will produce identical models with and without Freeview certification.

Another major organisation recently sued over the copyright of its schedule data. Cityrail in NSW tried to claim copyright on train timetables to stop people distributing mobile phone applications with the data embedded. Cityrail argued it was really just trying to ensure people didn't store outdated timetable information on their mobile phone. NSW Premier Rees intervened personally after public outcry and ordered Cityrail to work with application developers on making accurate data available over the net.