ASCAP v. MobiTV, Inc.

10-3161-cv(L)
ASCAP v. MobiTV, Inc.
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT
August Term 2011
Heard: October 11, 2011 Decided: May 22, 2012
Docket Nos. 10-3161-cv(L), -3310-cv(CON)
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AMERICAN SOCIETY OF COMPOSERS, AUTHORS AND
PUBLISHERS,
Defendant-Appellant,
v.
MOBITV, INCORPORATION, f/k/a/ IDETIC,
INCORPORATION,,
Appellee.
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Before: NEWMAN and LYNCH, Circuit Judges, and RESTANI,* Judge, U.S.
Court of International Trade.
Appeal from the July 6, 2010, judgment of the United States
District Court for the Southern District of New York (Denise Cote,
District Judge), setting royalty for blanket public performance
license for music in the ASCAP repertory that is embodied in
television and radio content to be delivered to viewers and listeners
using mobile telephones. In re Application of MobiTV, Inc., 712 F.
Supp. 2d 206 (S.D.N.Y. 2010).
*
Honorable Jane A. Restani, of the United States Court of
International Trade, sitting by designation.
Affirmed.
Ira M. Feinberg, Hogan Lovells US LLP,
New York, N.Y. (Eleanor M. Lackman,
Chava Brandriss, Hogan Lovells US LLP,
New York, N.Y.; Catherine E. Stetson,
Hogan Lovells US LLP, Washington, D.C.;
Joan M. McGivern, Richard H. Reimer,
Christine A. Pepe, ASCAP, New York,
N.Y.; David Leichtman, Hillel I.
Parness, Bryan J. Vogel, Oren D.
Langer, Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi
L.L.P., New York, N.Y., on the brief),
for Defendant-Appellant.
Kenneth L. Steinthal, Greenberg Traurig,
LLP, San Francisco, Cal. (Joseph R.
Wetzel, Harris L. Cohen, Matthew L.
Reagan, Greenberg Traurig, LLP, San
Francisco, Cal., on the brief), for
Appellee.
(Michael E. Salzman, Hughes Hubbard &
Reed LLP, New York, N.Y.; Marvin L.
Berenson, John Coletta, Joseph J.
DiMona, Broadcast Music, Inc., New
York, N.Y., for amicus curiae Broadcast
Music, Inc., in support of Defendant-
Appellant.)
(Bruce G. Joseph, Andrew G. McBride, Wiley
Rein LLP, Washington, D.C., for amicus
curiae Cellco Partnership d/b/a Verizon
Wireless, in support of Appellee.)
JON O. NEWMAN, Circuit Judge.
This appeal concerns determination of the proper royalty the
Defendant-Appellant American Society of Composers, Authors and
Publishers (“ASCAP”) is entitled to receive for a blanket public
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performance license for music in the ASCAP repertory that is embodied
in television and radio content to be delivered to viewers and
listeners using mobile telephones (sometimes called “handsets”). The
applicant for the license is Plaintiff-Appellee MobiTV, Inc. (“Mobi”),
which purchases programming from cable television networks and
transmits it to the wireless carriers to which consumers subscribe to
obtain wireless service on their handsets. When the parties could not
agree on a price for the performance rights to the music component of
Mobi’s offerings, ASCAP sought a reasonable rate in the District Court
for the Southern District of New York, acting as a rate court pursuant
to a consent decree. Following a bench trial, the District Court
(Denise Cote, District Judge) issued a judgment on July 7, 2010,
establishing various royalty rates, depending on the nature of the
programming, and designating the revenue bases to which those rates
apply. See In re Application of MobiTV, Inc., 712 F. Supp. 2d 206
(S.D.N.Y. 2010) (“MobiTV”). ASCAP appeals, contending that the
District Court’s rate formulation should have been based on the retail
revenues received by the wireless carriers from sales to their
customers, rather than the content providers’ wholesale revenues paid
by Mobi. We affirm.
Background
A. ASCAP
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ASCAP represents about half of the nation’s composers and music
publishers. These composers grant to ASCAP the non-exclusive right to
license public performances of their music.1 ASCAP has an estimated
8.5 million musical works in its repertoire. Because of concerns that
ASCAP’s size grants it monopoly power in the performance-rights
market, it is subject to a judicially-administered consent decree, the
most recent version of which was entered into on June 11, 2001.2
United States v. ASCAP, No. 41-1395. 2001 WL 1589999, at *1 (S.D.N.Y.
June 11, 2001). Under this Second Amended Final Judgment (“AFJ2"),
ASCAP is required to issue a “Through-to-the-Audience” (“TTTA”)
license to any operator “that transmits content to other music users
with whom it has an economic relationship relating to that content.”
AFJ2 § V. A TTTA license effectively allows the licensee to pay a
single fee in exchange for the right of the licensee, as well as any
1
The bundle of rights created by American copyright law includes
the “exclusive right[] to do and to authorize . . . perform[ance of]
the copyrighted work publicly.” 17 U.S.C. § 106. Although most
aspects of a copyright are typically owned by the studio or company
commissioning the musical composition, it is customary to allow
composers and music publishers to retain this “public performance”
right. In order for music to be legally performed, the prospective
user must first acquire a license for this public performance right.
2
Broadcast Music, Inc. (“BMI”) represents most of the remaining
composers in the American market. It operates under a consent decree
similar to ASCAP’s. See United States v. BMI (Application of Music
Choice), 316 F.3d 189, 190 (2d Cir. 2003).
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of its downstream partners, to perform any of the music in ASCAP’s
repertoire. Thus, for example, a radio broadcaster that transmits
music to various independent stations around the country could request
a TTTA license to cover the performances of any of the stations
receiving and playing its programming. The consent decree provides
that “[t]he fee for a [TTTA] license shall take into account the value
of all performances made pursuant to the license.” Id.
The AFJ2 obliges ASCAP to issue a TTTA license to any qualified
applicant seeking to perform ASCAP music within the United States.
Id. Upon request, ASCAP must quote a reasonable price for such a
license and enter into negotiations with the applicant. AFJ2 § IX(A).
If, following a predetermined negotiation period, the parties are
unable to reach agreement, either one may request the District Court
for the Southern District of New York, acting as “the rate court,” to
determine a reasonable rate.
B. Mobi
Mobi acts as a middleman between “content providers” – television
networks, record labels, and radio broadcasters – and wireless phone
carriers. To do that, Mobi aggregates content – television programs,
music videos, and the like – into a number of “channels” (with themes
such as “news,” “music,” and “comedy”) that wireless carriers then
offer to their customers as part of their phone subscription plans.
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In addition to aggregating content, Mobi also provides the technology
infrastructure for delivering this content directly to viewers.3
Mobi’s primary offerings may be roughly divided into three types:
television channels, radio channels, and music video channels.4
Television channels consist of programs and clips acquired directly
from the networks. Radio channels are acquired from audio-only
content providers, such as National Public Radio, ESPN Radio, or DMX,
Inc (“DMX”). Music video channels feature music videos that Mobi
acquires from various record labels. In the case of television and
radio channels, Mobi has little control over the content that is
ultimately placed into the channel by the content provider. In the
case of music videos, Mobi acts as a content provider itself by
acquiring and assembling individual music videos into themed channels
3
Mobi’s technology infrastructure is directed to transferring
large amounts of data quickly and fluidly over mobile phone networks.
Mobi provides this “back-end” infrastructure to a number of carriers
for whom it does not provide any content. In those cases, the
wireless carrier acquires content directly from the networks, record
labels, and other content providers and uses Mobi’s infrastructure to
the deliver that content.
4
Depending on the type of content it provides, a given channel may
be offered in a live, clip-linear, or video-on-demand (“VOD”) format.
Live content is streamed directly from the networks and is the most
popular and expensive content available from Mobi. Clip-linear
content delivers a repeating sequence, or “loop”, of programming set
by the content provider and refreshed periodically. VOD content
allows the customer to select a particular program or clip and watch
that piece of content immediately.
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designed and marketed by Mobi.
Payments to Mobi from the wireless carriers. Television, radio,
and music video content may be packaged for consumption in one of two
ways. First, groups of channels may be packaged for “à la carte”
selection, for which wireless phone customers pay a monthly fee,
usually around $10. Second, content may be “bundled” with other types
of non-Mobi products and services and sold to the customer as part of
a larger offering. When Mobi’s products are sold as part of a bundle,
it receives a flat dollar figure per subscriber per month based on the
relative value of the Mobi service to the bundle. In the latter case,
Mobi does not know how much the carrier received for the sale. In
both types of packaging, payments are not affected by whether
subscribers actually use any of Mobi’s content.5
In addition to the revenue from carriers for packaged content,
Mobi also earns a small amount of income from advertising that it
inserts into its channels. This revenue may be retained solely by
Mobi or shared with the wireless carriers pursuant to license
agreements.
Payments from Mobi to content providers. For the right to
5
Mobi markets its services as a way to help drive demand for more
expensive data plans, which are lucrative to the carriers.
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distribute content to the wireless carriers, Mobi generally pays the
networks and other content providers a per-subscriber fee. The size
of the fee, which Mobi negotiates with each content provider, depends
on the popularity of the channel. Although Mobi’s revenue-to-cost
ratio had been improving steadily in 2008, as of 2008 it had never
made a profit.
C. Procedural History
In November 2003, Mobi applied to ASCAP for a TTTA license for a
“service that allows mobile handset users to access television and
other content by aggregating television and other audio-visual content
for transmission over telecommunications networks.” Failing to reach
agreement over an appropriate rate, ASCAP applied to the District
Court in May 2008 for “a reasonable fee retroactive to the date of the
written request for a license.”
In the proceedings in the District Court, ASCAP contended that it
was entitled to over $41 million in fees for the period between 2003
and 2011.6 Mobi contended that it owed only $301,257.99 for the period
from November 2003 to July 2009.
When a party applies to the District Court to set a reasonable
6
In its appellate brief, ASCAP contends that the portion of this
fee attributable to the period from November 2003 to July 2009 was
approximately $15.8 million.
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rate for an ASCAP license, the AFJ2 requires that court to first
assess the reasonableness of the fee quoted by ASCAP. AFJ2 § IX(B),
(D). During this phase of the proceedings, ASCAP bears the burden of
establishing the reasonableness of its proposed fee. Id. If ASCAP
fails to meet its burden, the District Court must “determine a
reasonable fee based upon all the evidence.” AFJ2 § IX(D).
The District Court’s rejection of ASCAP’s fee proposals.
Pursuant to the AFJ2, the District Court first considered, and
rejected, ASCAP’s fee proposals.7 ASCAP had proposed a fee formula
that used as a starting point the revenues wireless carriers received
from their customers. In a thorough review, Mobi, 712 F. Supp. 2d at
236-244, the District Court identified a number of errors and
deficiencies in that methodology. Among these were the unrealistic
size of ASCAP’s starting revenue base ($54 billion), id. at 239, the
inclusion in that figure of large sums of revenues unrelated to the
value of Mobi’s products, including the revenues earned by the
wireless carriers on their primary services of telephonic
7
ASCAP made two different fee proposals in the court below. The
same formula was employed in each proposal, the principal distinction
being whether the wireless carriers would share some of the burden of
paying for the resulting fee. See Mobi, 712 F. Supp. 2d at 243.
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communications and Internet access, id. at 240-41, the use of faulty
calculations, id. at 240-41, the use of a high royalty rate (2.5
percent) based on an non-analogous benchmark, id. at 242, and the
large size of the resulting fee, id. Notably, the District Court
implicitly rejected the proposition that wireless carrier retail
revenues from their customers could be used as a base for a rate
calculation:
In sum, ASCAP has not carried its burden of showing that its
proposed fee for a TTTA license for Mobi is reasonable. It
has not shown that it located a revenue base with a
sufficient nexus to content “sourced” by Mobi within the
wireless carriers’ revenue base or that it is entitled to a
fee built upon any broader revenue base. Because ASCAP
chose a vastly inflated revenue base it faced the Herculean
task of contracting that base through a series of
calculations. Each of those layers of calculations was
laden with unsupported and faulty assumptions. The final
fee request was a demonstrably unreasonable number. . . .
And, of course, as the discussion of the complexity of the
[ASCAP] calculations illustrates, the adoption of this vast
revenue base, along with the layers of calculations required
to reduce it to a fee proposal, imposes enormous transaction
costs on the parties that are entirely out of line with the
commercial realities faced by both ASCAP and all but perhaps
the very largest communications companies in America.
Id. at 244.
The District Court’s fee formula. After rejecting ASCAP’s fee
proposals, the District Court proceeded, as provided in the consent
decree, to “determine a reasonable fee based upon all the evidence.”
AFJ2 § IX(D). In setting a reasonable rate, the District Court
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largely credited Mobi’s fee expert and adopted Mobi’s proposed fee
structure. The District Court’s formula differs from ASCAP’s in
several important respects.
First, the District Court declined to use the wireless carriers’
retail revenue from their customers as the base for the royalty
calculations. Instead, for programming obtained from television
networks, it used Mobi’s costs, i.e., the amount it pays to content
providers for content, plus any revenue derived by Mobi from
advertising inserted into that content. Mobi, 712 F. Supp. 2d at 246-
47.8 For programming obtained from record labels (music videos), the
Court used Mobi’s revenues, i.e., the amount it receives from wireless
carriers for its services, again along with advertising income. See
id. at 247.
Second, the District Court used ASCAP’s suggested rate of 2.5
percent only for all-audio channels. See id. at 248. For audio-visual
content, it applied the rates used in benchmark agreements between
ASCAP and the cable television industry. See id. at 247-48. The
District Court followed these benchmarks in applying rates of 0.9
percent to music-intensive programming (e.g., music video channels),
8
One result of taking Mobi’s costs as the revenue base, as the
District Court recognized, was that ASCAP received no fee for some
programming that content providers offered to Mobi for free. Mobi,
712 F. Supp. 2d at 250-51.
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0.375 percent to general entertainment content, and 0.1375 percent to
news and sports content. See id. at 255.
The result of these calculations was a judgment setting a fee of
$405,000 for the period from November 2003 through March 2010,
substantially less than ASCAP’s proposed fee of $15.8 million for a
somewhat shorter period.9
Discussion
A. Standard of Review
On an appeal from a rate determination, this Court reviews the
District Court’s factual findings for clear error and its conclusions
of law de novo. See United States v. ASCAP (Applications of
RealNetworks, Inc. and Yahoo! Inc.), 627 F.3d 64, 76 (2d Cir. 2010)
(“In order to find that the rate set by the District Court is
reasonable, we must find both that the rate is substantively
reasonable (that it is not based on any clearly erroneous findings of
fact) and that it is procedurally reasonable (that the setting of the
rate, including the choice and adjustment of a benchmark, is not based
on legal errors).”). We have likened this distinction to that between
the admissibility of evidence (a question of law) and an evaluation of
the persuasive force of that evidence (a question of fact). See ASCAP
9
The District Court’s fee structure was also intended to govern
the parties’ relationship through the end of the statutory contract
period, i.e., through 2011.
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v. Showtime/The Movie Channel, Inc., 912 F.2d 563, 569 (2d Cir. 1990).
When setting an appropriate rate, the District Court must attempt
to approximate the “fair market value” of a license – what a license
applicant would pay in an arm’s length transaction. See United States
v. BMI (Application of Music Choice), 316 F.3d 189, 194 (2d Cir. 2003)
(“Music Choice II”). In many cases, “the appropriate royalty rate” –
i.e., the fair market value of the license – “is determined by
applying the appropriate percentage rate to the fair market value of
the music.” Id. at 195 (emphasis supplied). In so doing, the rate-
setting court must take into account the fact that ASCAP, as a
monopolist, exercises market-distorting power in negotiations for the
use of its music. See RealNetworks, 627 F.3d at 76.
B. Rejection of ASCAP’s proposal
ASCAP does not contend on appeal that the District Court erred in
rejecting its royalty proposal.10 Instead it devotes its entire
argument to claimed deficiencies in the District Court’s own
determination, pursuant to the AFJ2, of a reasonable royalty. We
therefore limit our discussion to those alleged deficiencies.
10
Toward the end of its brief ASCAP asserts that the District
Court “erred in rejecting ASCAP’s proposed methodology outright as
unreasonable,” Brief for Appellant at 44, but this statement simply
continues the argument that the District Court should not have based
a royalty rate on wholesale revenues; it is not a claim that ASCAP’s
proposal should have been adopted.
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C. Alleged Deficiencies in the District Court’s Royalty Determination
The District Court’s royalty determination began with selection
of a revenue base to which the Court applied different percentage
rates depending on the category of programming. ASCAP’s primary
contention on appeal is that the Court selected an incorrect revenue
base.
1. The appropriate revenue base
The District Court used as a revenue base “the wholesale price
for the musical content,” MobiTV, 712 F. Supp. 2d at 247. At first
glance, this phrase might seem to involve circular reasoning: the
revenue base is being selected to determine what Mobi must pay ASCAP
for the right to perform ASCAP music, but what Mobi must pay ASCAP
might also be called “the wholesale price for the musical content.”
But, as used by the District Court, that is not what the phrase means.
In fact, the phrase has two other meanings depending on whether Mobi
is licensing content from content providers (typically television
networks) or obtaining music videos from record labels. The Court
explained its revenue base in these words:
For the programming that Mobi licenses from content
providers, aggregates, and conveys to wireless carriers, the
revenue base shall be the amounts that Mobi pays to the
cable television networks or other providers to license the
content, plus any revenue from advertising Mobi inserts into
that programming, including revenue that is shared with
wireless carriers or potentially content suppliers. For the
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music videos that Mobi obtains from record labels, programs
into music video channels, and then provides to the
carriers, the revenue base will be the revenue that Mobi
receives from the wireless carriers for this programming,
plus any revenue from advertising Mobi inserts into that
programming, including revenue that is shared with wireless
carriers or potentially content providers.
Id. (emphases added).
As can readily be seen, both revenue bases use wholesale revenue,
in one case the wholesale revenue that the cable television networks
receive from Mobi and in the other case the wholesale revenue that
Mobi receives from the wireless carriers. In neither case is retail
revenue used, i.e., the revenue the wireless carriers receive from the
handset customers.
At the outset, we can put aside one aspect of ASCAP’s challenge,
which is merely a semantic quibble. ASCAP repeatedly faults the
District Court for using Mobi’s “cost” or “costs” to obtain rights,
see Brief for Appellants at 30, 33. The District Court focused on
revenue, either the content providers’ revenue from Mobi or Mobi’s own
revenue from record labels. Obviously, with respect to programming
from content providers, the providers’ revenue from Mobi is the same
as Mobi’s payment of costs to those providers. The labeling is a
matter of perspective, not substance.
ASCAP’s fundamental objection is that the revenue base should
have been retail revenue received downstream in the distribution chain
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by the wireless carriers from their customers, rather than the
wholesale revenue received upstream by the content providers from
Mobi. We consider first the adequacy of the District Court’s reasons
for using the content providers’ revenue and then ASCAP’s complaint,
which is based primarily on this Court’s decision in Music Choice II.
The District Court’s reasons for using wholesale revenues. The
District Court expressed several reasons for using wholesale revenues
as “the appropriate revenue base from which to measure the value of
the public performance of the music at issue here.” MobiTV, 712 F.
Supp. 2d at 246. First, the Court explained that “[p]ricing the
public performance right at the time the content is first sold gives
direct and immediate feedback to content producers about the value of
a component of their product.” Id. Second, the Court accepted the
concept of what Mobi’s expert, Professor Roger G. Noll, called
“derived demand”:11
Mobi has shown that the value of the public performance
of the music at the retail level is indeed captured at the
wholesale level, not just theoretically by the concept of
derived demand, but also functionally from the fact that the
cable television networks principally generate their
revenues by measuring the number of subscribers for their
programming. To the extent that a channel’s content becomes
11
Noll explained in his 83 page declaration that “[t]he
relationship between final product markets and the demand for inputs
is called the theory of derived demand, and for the case of variable
factor proportions was first developed in John R. Hicks, The Theory of
Wages, MacMillan (1932).” Noll Declaration 47 n.40.
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popular among consumers, the seller of content demands a
higher rate of compensation from advertisers and from
purchasers of the content. And, Mobi’s payments to the
cable television networks for the programming it distributes
are driven by the subscriber data that Mobi tracks and
conveys to the networks.
Id.
Third, the District Court pointed out the administrative
advantages of using wholesale revenue:
[T]he administrative advantages of basing a rate on
wholesale revenue are amply illustrated in this case by the
challenges that ASCAP’s expert sought to surmount as she
endeavored to construct calculations that might result in a
reasonable fee and to justify those calculations. Fully
appreciating that the retail revenue base vastly overstates
the value of the public performance of the musical
composition, since it reflects so many inputs that bear
little or no relation to that content, she designed layers
of formulae to reduce the retail revenue base. At each step
of the process, those formulae raised a multitude of
questions about their intellectual rigor, fairness, and the
cost and burden associated with their implementation.
Id.
Fourth, the District Court relied on two factors that our Court
in Music Choice II had pointed out counsel against using retail
revenues as a revenue base:
This is a case in which many of the retail customers pay a
single fee for a bundle of programming, making it difficult
to determine what part of the fees is paid for music. Music
Choice II, 326 F.3d at 195 n.2. And the digital revolution,
which has turned handsets into computers and permitted
television programming to be included among the many
innovative products to which a consumer has immediate and
constant access, makes it an extremely complex task to tease
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out one component of the retail price and identify the
extent to which retail price is driven by the musical
content of the television programming. Id. at 196 n.3.
MobiTV, 712 F. Supp. 2d at 246-47.
ASCAP challenges the District Court’s reasons for using wholesale
revenues as the royalty base by disputing the validity of Prof. Noll’s
use of the principle of derived demand. See Brief for Appellant at 33-
36. Prof. Noll justified his use of that principle, which the
District Court accepted, in these words:
If consumers value musical performances more highly, they
will increase their purchases of musical performances, which
in turn will cause the derived demand for content that
contains music to increase. The resulting increase in sales
of content that contains music will lead to higher payments
for rights holders even if the royalty rate is unchanged.
Noll Declaration 45. He gave three reasons for using wholesale
revenue as the appropriate base:
First, using the revenue of the channel supplier leads to
royalties that are most closely connected to the intensity
of music use. Second, basing royalties on the revenue of
the channel supplier also avoids unreliable and expensive
methods for allocating revenue among bundled products and
services and to other inputs of retailers (here, the
wireless carriers). Third, the revenue of channel suppliers
includes sources of revenue that accrue to the channel but
not to the retailer, such as advertising that is inserted by
the channel supplier.
Id. at 48.
Despite cross-examining Prof. Noll in 120 pages of trial
transcript, ASCAP failed to provide the District Court with any basis
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for discounting, much less rejecting, his analysis.
ASCAP’s challenge to wholesale revenues based on Music Choice II
and IV. The Music Choice litigation, see Music Choice II, 316 F.3d
189, and United States v. Broadcast Music, Inc. (Application of Music
Choice), 426 F.3d 91 (2d Cir. 2005) (“Music Choice IV”), concerned the
appropriate royalty rate to be paid by Music Choice to Broadcast
Music, Inc. (“BMI”), for a TTTA license for the performance rights to
music in BMI’s repertory. Music Choice is a partnership that
transmits numerous music channels to listeners’ television sets via
cable and satellite and to their computers via the Internet. Like
ASCAP, BMI is subject to a consent decree that designates the Southern
District of New York as the rate court in the event of a royalty fee
dispute. Music Choice II, 316 F.3d at 190. BMI urged the Court to
follow an agreement between BMI and DMX, a competitor of Music Choice.
Under that agreement, DMX paid BMI 3.75 percent (later 4 percent) of
DMX’s wholesale revenue, which in this context meant the money paid by
the cable or satellite operators to DMX for music programming. See id.
at 192. That rate was designed to be approximately double the rate
previously applied to the retail revenues of the cable or satellite
operators on the theory that these operators charged their retail
customers approximately double what they were paying to the providers
of the music programming. See id.
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The District Court in the Music Choice litigation ruled that a
3.75 percent rate based on the wholesale revenues of Music Choice was
not appropriate. See id. at 193. The District Court explained that
this rate had been used in the DMX contracts to approximate the use in
previous contracts of a 2 percent rate of DMX’s wholesale revenues
plus 2 percent of the cable or satellite operators’ retail revenues.
Then the District Court reasoned that retail revenues did not reflect
the fair market value of music because the subscriber paying the
retail price was paying for materials and services not provided by the
author of the music. See id. at 194. The Court therefore deducted 2
percentage points (the retail rate) from the 3.75 percent that had
been applied to wholesale revenues and set 1.75 percent of wholesale
revenues as the appropriate rate. See id.
This Court reversed. We faulted the District Court for rejecting
retail revenues in determining an appropriate rate. See id. at 195.
In language embraced by ASCAP in the pending case, we said:
As to the court’s rejection of retail revenues, absent some
valid reason for using a different measure, what retail
customers pay to receive the product or service in question
(in this case, the recorded music) seems to us to be an
excellent indicator of its fair market value. While in some
instances there may be reason to approximate fair market
value on the basis of something other than the prices paid
by consumers, in the absence of factors suggesting a
different measure the price willing buyers and sellers agree
upon in arm’s length transactions appears to be the best
measure.
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It is true without doubt that to make the music
available to its customers, the retail seller must incur
expenses for various processes and services not provided by
the owner of the music, such as the laying of cable, the
establishment of satellite systems, etc. However, this is
in no way incompatible with the proposition that retail
revenues derived from the sale of music fairly measure the
value of the music. The customer pays the retail price
because the customer wants the music, not because the
customer wants to finance the laying of cable or the
launching of satellites.
Id. (citation and footnote omitted).
In the pending case, we are of course obliged to follow the
holding of Music Choice II, which was that the District Court had
erred by reducing a percentage rate that had been applied to wholesale
revenues by the rate previously applied to retail revenues. Nothing
of that sort occurred in our case. Of course, ASCAP urges us to heed
not merely the holding of Music Choice II but its language,
particularly the observation that “what retail customers pay to
receive the product of service in question (in this case, the recorded
music) seems to us to be an excellent indicator of its fair market
value.” For several reasons we conclude that the quoted words do not
compel a reversal of the District Court’s decision in this case.
First, the quoted words were preceded by the important qualifying
phrase “absent some valid reason for using a different measure.” In
the pending case, the District Court had a very valid reason for using
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a different measure: the unimpeached testimony of Prof. Noll
explaining several reasons why wholesale revenue was far superior to
retail revenue as a basis for a royalty rate in this case.
Second, in Music Choice II our Court added a significant
footnote, observing that “where the customers pay a single fee for a
package of audio and visual programming, which includes the music, it
will be difficult to determine what part of the fees paid was for the
music, as opposed to other programming.” Id. at 195 n.2. That is
precisely the sort of “bundling” that occurs with Mobi’s transmission
of programming to wireless carriers. The wireless carriers typically
offer Mobi’s television products as part of a bundle of services that
also includes Internet access and text messaging, and then charge a
single data plan fee for the whole bundle. As ASCAP’s fee proposal to
the District Court illustrated, separating out the relative value of
each individual product is fraught with methodological difficulty.
ASCAP’s proposal was premised on the notion that the value of
different products in the bundle could be determined based upon how
much data each product used. As the District Court noted, this
proposal made the essentially arbitrary assumption “that a consumer
would pay the same amount of money to receive a kilobyte of text
messaging as a kilobyte of television programming, even though a
kilobyte might give a consumer several back-and-forth exchanges of
-22-
text messages but only the briefest glimpse of an image from a
television program.” MobiTV, 712 F. Supp. 2d at 241. ASCAP’s failure
to develop a rational formula for valuing the component parts in the
bundle of products sold by the wireless carriers confirms the wisdom
of the District Court’s decision to reject the use of a retail base in
this case. The products bundled by Mobi differed considerably from
the programming channels in Music Choice II, which were essentially
audio channels devoted exclusively to music.
Third, although not disagreeing with the holding of Music Choice
II, we are not persuaded that its contention that “retail revenues
derived from the sale of the music fairly measure the value of the
music,” id. at 195, is universally true. Indeed, an example offered
in that opinion seems to undermine that assertion. The example
concerned purchasers of music on a compact disc sold for $12. Music
Choice II noted that the purchasers
were not motivated to spend their money to pay the salaries
of truck drivers, warehousemen, bookkeepers, office
administrators, salespersons and executives, all of whom
played necessary roles in bringing the record to market.
What the customers wanted was a record of certain music, and
they were willing to pay $12 to get it.
Id. (emphasis added).
At an earlier time, the customer who wanted to hear the music in
that example had a choice between a then-novel compact disc and an
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old-fashioned vinyl plastic record, which (unless it had value as a
rarity) would have sold for considerably less than the $12 for the CD.
True, the purchaser was not motivated to pay the salaries of all the
personnel whose efforts made possible the production and delivery of
the CD (or the vinyl record), but preference for a CD would have
resulted in payment of a higher price than for a record, even though
both contained the same music. The retail price of the CD was
reflecting not just the value the purchaser assigned to the music but
also the value assigned to the mode of delivery of that music. In
another significant footnote, Music Choice II acknowledged this very
fact:
If it were demonstrated that retail purchasers were
motivated to pay more because of advantages that resulted
from a particular mode of delivery, such as better quality,
better accessability or whatever, this might justify a
conclusion that retail price of the service purchased by the
customer exceeded the fair market value of the music.
Id. at 196 n.3. Whether or not in some contexts the retail price of
a product containing music is a good measure of the fair market value
of the music, the District Court in the pending case, on the record
before it, did not err in concluding that the retail price paid by
customers for a service that delivers video and audio channels
containing music to their handsets is not a good measure of the value
-24-
of the music itself.12
ASCAP’s challenge to wholesale revenues based on uncompensated
rights. ASCAP also faults the District Court’s use of wholesale
revenues because such use fails to provide any compensation to ASCAP
in the few instances where Mobi acquired programming without paying
anything to content providers. Prof. Noll recognized that this would
occur in some instances because a new channel trying to get
established sometimes cannot command any price, and providers of such
content would rather offer it for free in order to have it included in
a package of bundled content. He explained, however, that such a
channel would either disappear for lack of an audience or achieve an
audience, in which event the popularity of its programming would
subsequently be reflected in the later revenues that content providers
could demand, thereby increasing ASCAP’s royalty for the benefit of
the music composers. See Trial Tr. 985-88. Either way, the temporary
use of free content would not undermine the overall reasonableness of
the District Court’s royalty determination. As the District Court
12
Although our Court’s decision in Music Choice IV noted that the
District Court in that litigation “should not have rejected the retail
price of music as an indication of its fair market value,” 426 F.3d at
95, it also acknowledged that “in spite of our endorsement of retail
price as generally a good marker for fair market value, we did not
require it to be used in all circumstances, but only absent some valid
reason for using a different measure,” id. at 97 (internal quotation
marks omitted).
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explained, “The market for television content has spoken, and this
content would receive no airing at all through a wireless distribution
platform unless the content were provided for free and given the
opportunity to build a base.” 712 F. Supp. 2d at 251.
2. ASCAP’s Remaining Objections
ASCAP’s remaining objections were properly rejected by the
District Court. For clarification, we discuss briefly two such
matters.
ASCAP contends that the District Court erred in failing to “test”
the resulting fee for reasonableness. Although the size of the fee is
clearly relevant to its reasonableness, there is no requirement that
the District Court explicitly engage in a testing of the fee resulting
from its formula. On the contrary, the AFJ2 requires only that the
District Court “determine a reasonable fee.” AFJ2 § IX(D).
ASCAP also contends that the District Court erred by failing to
include the value of licenses for content acquired by others but
streamed to customers using Mobi’s back-end technology infrastructure.
Such content would include, for example, television programming
acquired by Sprint directly from the networks, and then provided to
its customers using Mobi’s servers and patented technology. ASCAP
argues that Mobi is required to obtain a performance license for all
unlicensed content that it streams, regardless of whether it has been
-26-
assured by its upstream partner that such a license has already been
procured. This objection also lacks merit. If an upstream content
provider has already acquired a TTTA license from ASCAP, it would be
unfair to require Mobi to make a second payment for the same content.
See United States v. ASCAP (In re Application of AT&T Wireless), 607
F. Supp. 2d 562, 570-71 (S.D.N.Y. 2009). Furthermore, Mobi is
entitled to rely on its upstream partner’s assurances that it is
protected – and to manage the accompanying risk that the partner has
not obtained the promised right.13 ASCAP, for its part, retains the
power to protect its rights by bringing an infringement action against
Mobi or any other party. As a result, the District Court did not err
by construing the license to exclude such content.
Conclusion
For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the District Court is
affirmed.
13
Mobi would, presumably, manage this risk through an
indemnification agreement or similar arrangement with the upstream
provider.
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