The challenge, being waged by ABC, NBC,CBS, FOX, Disney and others, thrusts Barry Diller-backed Aereo into a David-v.-Goliath showdown likely to come before the court in April.
Last spring, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in New York ruled 2-1 that the live streaming did not violate broadcasters' copyrights.
The broadcasters' appeal was backed by others, including the National Football League and Major League Baseball.
"We look forward to presenting our case to the Supreme Court," said Aereo CEO and founder Chet Kanojia, in a statement released Friday. "We believe that consumers have a right to use an antenna to access over-the-air television and to make personal recordings of those broadcasts."
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Consumers who want better access to network TV programming without buying cable have cheered on start-ups such as Aereo. But broadcasters say that costs them advertising revenue as well as retransmission fees that cable companies pay to carry their channels.
Backed by Diller, the longtime media mogul, Aereo retransmits broadcast TV content using a farm of mini-antennas in Brooklyn. Each antenna receives the TV signal and allows a subscriber to view or record the content through Aereo's streaming technology. Subscribers need an Internet connection and pay Aereo fees ranging from $1 a day to $80 a year.
Aereo says it does not infringe on broadcasters' copyrights because its mini-antennas are individually leased by the subscribers. That, says Aereo, makes the subsequently streamed content a "private performance" for each paying subscriber that is not subject to licensing agreements.
Broadcasters say that all services that re! transmit broadcast programming to the public are engaged in "public performances" that require licenses from copyright owners.
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