Aereo assets sold, for a pittance [telecom]

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Brian Santo, CEDmagazine, 02/27/2015

And thus ends one of the more interesting technological digressions of recent years. The few assets that Aereo had left were auctioned off and brought in less than $2 million, far, far less than what the defunct company had hoped to reap from the sale.

TiVo picked up the company's trademark and its customer list. RPX, a patent portfolio manager, bought Aereo's patents.

The company held 18 patents, some associated with its micro-antenna arrays and how they worked, some with the process of streaming video.

Aereo developed a scheme to provide access to over-the-air broadcast TV stations via broadband. The company's approach was to deploy arrays of micro-antennas, assigning one antenna per subscriber; the company would also record shows on behalf of its customers.

The idea was to operate essentially as a network DVR, a legal process. The company took the position that since all it was doing was providing remote access and nDVR service, it was not a multi-channel video program distributor (MVPD) and therefore did not owe broadcasters retransmission consent fees.

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Neal McLain