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Sony counters in-flight content firm’s defence in United Airlines case

By Chris Cooke | Published on Friday 27 June 2014

Sony Music has returned to court to dispute a defence submitted by one of the defendants in the in-flight music lawsuit launched by the major last October.

As previously reported, Sony sued United Airlines last year claiming that the airplane operator was offering its passengers access to in-flight music services without the appropriate licences. United seemingly passed the buck to another defendant, InFlight Productions, which provides its music content.

Now, InFlight is a Dublin-based company and says that it has a licence for its music services from the Irish record industry’s collecting society Phonographic Performance Ireland.

Sony had already argued that it didn’t think the service operated by United would be eligible for a licence from the American collecting society for digital services, SoundExchange, because it offered too much functionality (which, when it comes the sound recording side of digital music licensing, generally means direct licences from the labels are required).

But even if the PPI licence did cover InFlight’s system, it only would in Ireland. And even if you argue that, when in the air, planes are customarily governed by an airline’s home jurisdiction, so perhaps Irish copyright law would extend beyond Ireland if an air firm was registered there, United Airlines is an American company.

Though whatever the ins and outs of the PPI licence, according to The Hollywood Reporter InFlight has bounced the buck back to its client on this one, arguing that it isn’t responsible for what United Airlines does with its technology once it is installed, because it has no way of controlling how and where the music service is used. To that end InFlight asked for the lawsuit against itself to be dismissed.

But Sony isn’t impressed with that argument, because while it may be true InFlight has no control over its technology once installed on a plane, when you are providing content services to airlines – the major argues – its pretty clear said services are going to be used in multiple territories, and they should be licensed with that in mind.

The major’s court filing reads: “By operating without authorisation and thus skirting rightful payment to copyright owners in the United States, InFlight has been able to price its services low, making these services attractive to the world’s airlines, and thus earning significant revenue from United and other airline clients. In sum, InFlight deliberately built a profitable business based on facilitating the infringement of plaintiff’s copyrighted sound recordings in the United States and in New York on a massive scale”.