Appeals Court Tells Universal Music: You Lost The Veoh Case, Get Over It

from the moving-on... dept/http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130627/10543823639/appeals-court-tells-universal-music-you-lost-veoh-case-get-over-it.shtml

The Universal Music case against Veoh is quite incredible on many layers. Universal Music sued Veoh, a YouTube-like company, despite the fact that Veoh was quite careful in abiding by the DMCA's safe harbor rules. Universal Music has lost at every single level, though the costs of the lawsuit put Veoh out of business (someone else bought up the domain and continues to run a site, but it's not the original Veoh). Despite losing, and losing badly, Universal Music keeps pumping huge sums of money into the law firms it hired to continually appeal the rulings against it, despite them being overwhelmingly against Universal Music. Back in March, the appeals court, once again sided with Veoh, but Universal Music asked for the court to rehear the case.

The Ninth Circuit appeals court has made it clear it has no interest in rehearing the case:

The panel has voted to deny Appellant's petition for rehearing. Judges Pregerson and Berzon have voted to deny the petition for rehearing en banc and Judge Fisher so recommends.

The full court has been advised of the petition for rehearing en banc and no judge has requested a vote on whether to rehear the matter en banc.

Basically, not a single judge on the court thinks there's any issue here at all. Universal Music lost. It lost big. It lost clearly and with little question to whether or not it should have lost. Not a single judge on the court thought that it's even worth bothering exploring this issue again since the issues and the decision were so clear.

Of course, given that Universal Music's lawyers seem to be running the show, I fully expect them to ask the Supreme Court to review the case as well (rack up those billing hours!). Chances are the Supreme Court will deny cert (what's the issue to review here?), but if they actually take the case, it could lead to a clear decision on how Universal Music's warped interpretation of the DMCA, that it requires filters, is obviously incorrect.