An Epitaph for Aereo

For a company that could always punch well above its weight in drawing press coverage, Aereo’s sale of its assets in bankruptcy last week drew surprisingly little coverage.

Less than a month before last year’s Supreme Court decision finding that Aereo’s retransmission of broadcast TV signals over the Internet constituted copyright infringement, a Forbes article discussing Aereo’s prospects in court noted the company had “a putative valuation of $800 million or so (that could vault up if Aereo wins).” The article went on to note that “It’s a tidy business, too, bringing in an estimated $40 million while reaping 77% gross margins ….”

Aereo made its case before a variety of judges and in the court of public opinion that it was an innovative tech company, with a growing patent portfolio and cutting edge technology. When broadcasters argued that Aereo was merely retransmitting broadcast programming to subscribers for a fee without paying copyright holders, Aereo doubled down, arguing before the Supreme Court that it was at the vanguard of cloud computing, and that a decision adverse to Aereo would devastate the world of cloud computing. In a blog post published the day Aereo filed its response brief at the Court, Aereo CEO Chet Kanojia wrote:

If the broadcasters succeed, the consequences to American consumers and the cloud industry are chilling.

The long-standing landmark Second Circuit decision in Cablevision has served as a crucial underpinning to the cloud computing and cloud storage industry. The broadcasters have made clear they are using Aereo as a proxy to attack Cablevision itself. A decision against Aereo would upend and cripple the entire cloud industry.

So Aereo’s narrative heading into the Supreme Court was clear: Aereo is a cutting edge technology company that is not in the content business, and a prototypical representative of the cloud computing industry in that industry’s first encounter with the Supreme Court.

As CommLawCenter readers know, the Supreme Court rejected that narrative, finding that a principal feature of Aereo’s business model was copyright infringement, and the Court saw little difficultly in separating Aereo’s activities from that of members of the public storing their own content in the cloud.

The results of Aereo’s asset sale reveal much about the accuracy of the Supreme Court’s conclusions, and about the true nature of Aereo itself. The value of Aereo’s cutting edge technology, patent portfolio, trademark rights, and equipment when sold at auction fell a bit short of last year’s $800 million valuation. How much was Aereo worth without broadcast content? As it turns out, a little over $1.5 million. But even that number apparently overstates the value of Aereo’s technology as represented by its patent portfolio.

Tivo bought the Aereo trademark, domain names, and customer lists for $1 million, apparently as part of its return to selling broadcast DVRs. Another buyer paid approximately $300,000 for 8,200 slightly-used hard drives.

And the value of the Aereo patent portfolio? $225,000.

To add insult to injury, the patent portfolio was not purchased by a technology company looking to utilize the patents for any Internet video venture. The buyer was RPX, a “patent risk solutions” company. The World Intellectual Property Review quoted an RPX spokesman regarding the purchase, who stated that “RPX is constantly evaluating ways to clear risk on behalf of its more than 200 members. The Aereo bankruptcy afforded RPX a unique opportunity to quickly and decisively remove risk in the media and technology sectors, thus providing another example of the clearinghouse approach at work.”

In other words, the Aereo patent portfolio was purchased for its nuisance value, which, having lost the ability to resell broadcast programming, turned out to be all the value Aereo had.