Time Warner Cable has been facing a backlash from the TV industry ever since it rolled out its live-video-streaming iPad app earlier this month. Now, the cable giant faces one of its first real legal challenges over the app in the form of a cease-and-desist letter from Fox, and it likely won't be the last unless Time Warner can figure out a way to placate the channels that are left.

Time Warner's free iPad app made its debut in mid-March with the ability to stream live TV from more than 30 channels to existing Time Warner cable subscribers. The video was available in high definition and the app only allowed streams of what was currently airing—the company said at the time that video-on-demand capabilities and control over DVR recordings (a la Comcast's iPad app) would come at a later date. Even without these extra features, Time Warner's app was the first from a cable company to go straight to live TV, with Time Warner CEO Rob Marcus declaring that it would "convert any room in a house into a TV room."

It didn't lake long before channel owners began complaining about Time Warner's app. After receiving complaints from various channel owners, Time Warner removed 17 channels from the app within days of its launch, including popular ones the Disney Channel, Lifetime, MTV, and National Geographic. The remaining channels included CNN, Food Network, SyFy, The History Channel, and Fox.

One unnamed executive told Variety last week that a legal action over the iPad app was just "days away," and that executive may very well have been from Fox. Network spokesperson Scott Grogin confirmed to Bloomberg that the company indeed sent a cease-and-desist letter to Time Warner, arguing that the cable company doesn't have the rights to rebroadcast live TV channels without permission.

Time Warner, of course, thinks otherwise. According to a page from a site called IWantMyTWCableTVApp.com (a site owned by Time Warner Cable, if you couldn't tell from the convoluted domain name): "Time Warner Cable has broad rights under its agreements with programmers to provide viewing on every screen in our customers’ homes."

The company adds that it configured the iPad app to only work within the home so that it could stay within those rights, and that it "will continue to push to protect our customers’ ability to watch the programming they’ve paid for in their homes on whatever screen they want!"

Aside from the aforementioned website, Time Warner has not commented publicly on whether it has received any legal requests from the channels it includes in the app. The company did apparently tell Bloomberg that the iPad is no different from a portable TV when used inside the home for TV viewing, but as we have learned from Amazon's recent licensing dustup with the music industry, any use that is not explicitly spelled out in the original contract tends to draw ire from content owners, even if the law is still working on catching up to the digital age.