The Supreme Court turned down the petition of TVEyes for reconsideration of the ruling of the Second Circuit that TVEyes infringed Fox News copyrights. TVEyes is a media monitoring service that records virtually all TV news broadcasts in a searchable database. Subscribers can search for content by keyword and download 10-minute clips from the broadcasts. TVEyes raised a fair use defense against Fox News’s copyright infringement action, citing the importance of its service to media analysis and criticism. It stressed Fox News’s “outsized relevance to national political debate” because of the evident influence of Fox commentary on opinions expressed by President Trump. Fox rebutted this argument by asserting that the case was about nothing more than unauthorized distribution of copyrighted content. The Circuit Court, in applying the four-factor fair use test, found that the economic harm to Fox’s ability to license its own content outweighed the purported benefits of the TVEyes service to public discourse.

The Supreme Court denied TVEyes’ cert petition without opinion. The case will go back to the trial court to determine the final scope of TVEyes’ injunction and damages.

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