While You Weren't Looking, Aereo Has Been Busy

After sending out last month's press release, Aereo expanded its plans to cover another 21 cities by the end of 2013.

That earned it the further ire of broadcasters led by CBS who vowed - as I predicted - to sue Aereo wherever it went. Not content simply to play defense, Aereo went back to court in New York and filed suit against CBS and various CBS affiliates.

The suit seeks a declaratory judgment that Aereo does not infringe CBS's copyrights, which is what the 2nd Circuit said. The suit is filed in New York in part because that's where the original suit was tried and because part of Aereo's complaint is that by threatening to sue everywhere, CBS is both "venue shopping" and trying to evade the ruling against it in the original court. In general courts look poorly on those kinds of legal shenanigans so they may well get their declaratory judgment, but I don't think that's going to stop CBS.