Matthew Lloyd/Getty Images
Karen Murphy, owner of the Red, White and Blue Pub in Southsea, England, faces a criminal lawsuit after buying a decoder card that allows her to show league games from Greek television.
Karen Murphy, owner of the Red, White and Blue Pub in Southsea, England, faces a criminal lawsuit after buying a decoder card that allows her to show league games from Greek television. Photographer: Matthew Lloyd/Getty Images
The Premier League, home to some of
Europe’s most successful soccer clubs including Manchester
United, won a copyright ruling against U.K. pub owners who saved
money by showing matches using Greek decoder cards.
The ruling today by Judge David Kitchin in London
incorporated a judgment from the European Union’s highest court
in October, which enforced some limits on how pub and bar owners
can show copyrighted material to customers. Kitchin issued an
injunction against the pubs and referred the case to an
intellectual-property court to assess monetary damages.
“The defendants who are continuing to trade must be
entitled to carry on their business in a way which avoids
infringement” of the Premier League’s copyrights “if they are
able to do so,” Kitchin said in the judgment.
Karen Murphy, owner of the Red, White and Blue Pub in
Southsea, England, faces a criminal lawsuit after buying a
decoder card that allows her to show league games from Greek
television. British Sky Broadcasting Group Plc (BSY), the U.K.’s
biggest pay-TV operator, has said the cards are “illicit”
because they’re being used outside their specified area.
A call to the defendant law firm Smithfield Partners in
Last year’s ruling by the EU Court of Justice in Luxembourg
also held that the Premier League’s geographic restrictions on
broadcasters such as BSkyB showing its soccer matches breach EU
antitrust rules. Today’s ruling focused on taverns.
Territorial licenses are contrary to competition law if the
license agreements “prohibit the supply of decoder cards to
television viewers who wish to watch the broadcasts,” the EU
court said. Pubs can’t show the feeds via foreign decoder cards
without the permission of the copyright owner, such as the
broadcasters and the league, the Luxembourg court said.
The judgment “is consistent with the ECJ ruling,” Nick
Noble, a Premier League spokesman, said in a statement. “The
law gives us the right to prevent the unauthorized use of our
copyrights in pubs and clubs when they are communicated to the
public without our authority.”
The Premier League started a three-year 1.8 billion-pound
($2.85 billion) U.K. television contract in August 2010, and
receives a further 1.4 billion pounds from the sale of
international broadcast rights.
To contact the reporter on this story:
Erik Larson in London at
elarson4@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Anthony Aarons at
aaarons@bloomberg.net
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Article source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-03/premier-league-wins-u-k-ruling-against-pubs-on-broadcasts-1-.html
