Advanced Television

Alki David ramps up Barry Diller battle

February 8, 2013

By Colin Mann

Greek Billionaire Alki David, founder of Internet-based content streaming provider FilmOn, is suing rival service Aereo’s founder Barry Diller in the next stage of the battle between the pair, at the same time bemoaning the involvement of the legal fraternity.

FilmOn offers all the major US network television networks in seven major cities, as well as having added five hundred premium channels to its line-up, which it claims makes it the world’s largest free premium Live TV platform.

FilmOn’s ‘False Designation’ complaint, filed in the United States District Court in the Central District of California, notes that on January 2 2012, FilmOn released the FilmOn AIR and FilmOn Aero portable TV tuner prototypes to the market almost two months before ‘Bamboom’ announced its name change to ‘Aereo’.

FilmOn says it even acquired an exclusive licence to the renowned Win-TV Aero, a TV tuner device for capturing over-the-air ATSC Television signals, pointing out that the Aero technology and trademark had existed for some years prior to 2012.

“It’s a shame I have to spend millions suing these people. It is the people’s right to free to a service like FilmOn,” said David. “I will not stand to be slandered,” he declared. “You may know that Barry Diller sued me for calling the FilmOn Aero service ‘Barry Driller’ and naming the company ‘AereoKiller Inc’. What is even more surprising is that and he won a temporary restraining order because the judge felt it was passing off Barry Diller’s fame,” he remarked.

“Personally I blame the lawyers.”. If it were not for their insatiable desire to create billable controversy we would not be in the situation where I have to spend my time and resources to punish them,” he said.

“I would much rather continue running my TV stations and building the FilmOn Platform which has in fact today got more current and professionally-made content than Aereo, Hulu, YouTube, U-Stream or any other Live TV or VoD site. In fact I can confidently say that FilmOn.com has more content than Aero and Netflix combined as well as several additional products and services that include Interactive TV stations in major markets across America and Europe,” he declared.

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