WWE wins $2.1-million in case lawyer says furthers anti-TV signal piracy efforts

World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. (WWE) has won a $2.1-million case in the Federal Court of Canada against numerous sports bars for pirating its pay-per-view (PPV) programming in a case that its lawyer calls "a major win." William McKenzie, who represented the WWE, says that the 41 sports bars who were defendants in the case either got the programming illegally by pretending to be and paying as a residential customer, or by outright stealing the TV signals. "From a business point of view, it’s telling the legitimate operators that you’re not going to see their business undermined and, therefore, it gives a positive creditability to the business," says McKenzie, a partner with Crawford, McKenzie, McLean, Wilford, Anderson and Duncan LLP. "Plus, the distribution undertakings that are seeing their residential subscriptions being used improperly have never ganged up and done something about it, so it’s a win for them even though they never participated (in the case)," he notes. "It’s looking out for the legitimate commercial customers and also equally importantly putting a foot down that residential subscriptions ought not to be used in commercial establishments." McKenzie also notes that the case has made inroads against signal theft because the judge awarded damages that were triple the amount that the programming would normally have cost the sports bars, considered the profits the bars made on the night the programming was shown and also included some heavy hitting injunctions. The permanent injunctions issued by the court with regard to this case restrain the defendants, including their officers, directors, principals, servants, employees, representatives, affiliated companies and subsidiaries, from "directly or indirectly, importing, manufacturing, distributing, assembling, modifying, leasing, offering for lease, selling, offering for sale, operating or possessing unauthorized devices of any kind whatsoever (of any component thereof) designed or intended to be used directly or indirectly to decode or facilitate the decoding of secured programming signals without the authorization of the lawful distributor…" The defendants also can’t decode the secured programming signals, provide the equipment or devices to other people to receive or decode secured programming signals, and cannot make unauthorized use of WWE’s trademarks. "Piracy has become my baby over the years. It’s subtle but a major win because in the last case I did, which involved boxing, the judge there said ‘I’m only going to enjoin them from stealing the boxing,’" states McKenzie. "This injunction, even though it’s on behalf of WWE, if you read it carefully it enjoins them against any piracy. It sounds like a subtle change, but from my point of view, it’s a major leap forward." He adds, "Now, it’s only the WWE who can enforce that, but it’s still a major hurdle that we got over. But let’s say you have a pirated TV signal in your sports bar, and the decision was too narrow, then the bars would only have to turn off the television during WWE. Now, if you are a distribution undertaking and you see illegal closed-circuit hockey games being shown, it can not only accuse the bar of stealing the pay-per-view programming, but it can also state that the establishment has breached this injunction. They are in contempt of court." In determining the amount of damages that each bar should pay, the judge took the cost per seat of the PPV programming ($10 for Royal Rumble on Jan. 21, 2001, $10 for No Way Out on Feb. 25, 2001, $20 for Wrestlemania X7 on April 1, 2001, $10 for Backlash on April 29, 2001, $10 for King of the Ring on June 24, 2001, $10 for No Way Out on Feb. 17, 2002, and $20 for Wrestlemania X8 on March 17, 2002) and multiplied it by the number of patrons in the bar and then timed that by three, and added the profits made at the bar that evening. For example, the bar Roy on a Dolphin Ltd., or Tommy Cook’s, was ordered to pay $215,710 in damages to WWE. The establishment has a seating capacity of 881, and illegally showed five WWE pay-per-view events. The judge also nailed each of the defendants for $1,500 in court costs. "We convinced the judge that the bars should pay triple the amount they should have paid. In my business that’s quite a leap forward. Plus the judge even went further, and this was the one that really thrilled me, said he was going to make the bars pay back the profits made on those nights. What it sends out is the message that you’re not going to get away with stealing (TV programming)," notes McKenzie. "You should hear the howling now from these people whom we sent letters asking them not to do it. And then they did it, and now they’re complaining and getting their lawyers to say, ‘Wait, wait, we’ll pay the amount that it actually costs for the programming,’" he adds. McKenzie says that this decision, rendered on March 25, coupled with others, such as the April 2002 Supreme Court of Canada determination that the black and grey satellite TV markets were illegal (CCR Update, April 26/02), is a step forward in the fight against the illegal pirating of TV signals. "My business is a game of inches. It took us about six years to get the Supreme Court on one issue, and now we’ve got this other thing cemented in place. We’re slowly getting the message out that there is nowhere to hide," he concludes.

WWE wins $2.1-million in case lawyer says furthers anti-TV signal piracy efforts

Broadcast | April 22, 2004

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