In February, the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) filed a lawsuit saying Omniverse, the company that powers many live TV streaming services that included the HDHomeRun Premium TV, SkyStream TV, and TikiLive allowing them to access channels like ESPN and Disney do not have the rights to this content. ACE’s members include some of the biggest names in TV with the goal of protecting their works.
According to Jason DeMeo, they have a 100-year contract that allows Omniverse to sell a streaming service. According to DeMeo, this contract is with his company, Hovsat Inc., a small private cable operator based in New Jersey, which operates in Freehold and Tinton Falls, New Jersey. Hovsat Inc., is what is used to resell Omniverse streaming rights to companies like TikiLive and SkyStream TV.
Now Omniverse lawyers are asking a judge to remove any comparisons to the “pirate” streaming box vendor Dragon Box as “scandalous” and “immaterial.”
“Comparisons between Omniverse and Dragon Box are immaterial because Dragon Box is a hardware device utilizing software to search and link pirated content and Omniverse is a marketing partner of a cable company,” Omniverse said through their lawyers.
“Comparisons between Omniverse and Dragon Box are also scandalous because comparing the two unlike entities damages Omniverse through guilt by (misplaced) association,” Omniverse writes.
This comes just a week after Clikia dropped their live TV streaming service that was powered by Omniverse, according to a report from Lightreading.com. This also happened a few weeks after HDHomeRun Premium TV, which was powered by Omniverse, shut down.
According to the announcement from Clikia, the “vast majority of its OTT programming” comes from an unnamed third party that obtains its content from Omniverse. Omniverse has several partners that offer “white label” streaming service solutions with your company name.
For now, all of this is in the hands of the courts. Both sides seem to be not backing down. Omniverse seems confident that they have not broken any laws. ACE seems to be standing firm in their lawsuit. We will have to wait and see what the judge does next.
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