Rogers Cable and Yahoo! Co-brand Services to Customers

On January 21, 2004, Rogers Cable Communications Inc. announced an agreement with Yahoo! Inc. to provide co-branded Internet services to subscribers to Rogers’ high-speed residential Internet access service. Under the agreement, Yahoo! and Rogers will provide Rogers’ subscribers with co-branded high-speed Internet access bundled with a combination of Yahoo! content, products and services specifically customized and optimized for Rogers’ broadband Internet access customers, including a customized browsing environment, personalized homepage, enhanced e-mail including spam control and additional storage, security and parental controls, premium pop-up blocking, enhanced instant messaging capabilities, digital photo tools and storage, online music, and games. The agreement also contemplates that the parties may collaborate to offer premium packages of products and services to Rogers subscribers for an additional fee. The total value of the deal, which involved a revenue-sharing arrangement, is undisclosed due to competitive reasons.

Under the agreement, Yahoo! will take over the operation of Rogers’ e-mail platform and will provide enhanced e-mail services without requiring a change by Rogers’ subscribers to their e-mail address. The co-branded service will be available to all Rogers high-speed Internet access customers across Rogers’ cable territories, which currently includes customers in Ontario, New Brunswick and Newfoundland.

The Rogers legal team was led by Jennifer Warren, vice-president, assistant general counsel; and assisted by Torys LLP, with a team that included Wendy Gross, Ian Cooper, Jay Duffield, Sherri Kreisman and Wendy Matheson (corporate), Linda Plumpton (arbitration and dispute resolution) and Jay Holsten (competition). Yahoo! was represented in-house by Asha Gosein, legal manager, Yahoo! Canada; and by Cooley Godward LLP in Palo Alto, California, with a team that included Glenn Nash and Kara Hagen.