But Sony Corp. of Am. v. Universal City Studios remains the gold standard for copyright litigation arising from TV recordings. And under that precedent, Dish Network didn't likely infringe Fox TV's copyright — though it might have breached its programming contract, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled Wednesday in a case closely watched by traditional TV networks.
"Commercial-skipping does not implicate Fox's copyright interest because Fox owns the copyrights to the television programs, not to the ads aired in the commercial breaks," Judge Sidney Thomas wrote for the unanimous panel in Fox Broadcasting v. Dish Network. "If recording an entire copyrighted program is a fair use [under Sony], the fact that viewers do not watch the ads not copyrighted by Fox cannot transform the recording into a copyright violation."
