Donna Dennis, licensee of the Bucks Head Hotel, was taken to court after refusing Sky's demand that she return a viewing card. It followed an investigation by the broadcaster which showed she was showing Sky Sports without the correct commercial viewing agreement in place.
At Clerkenwell and Shoreditch County Court last month a District Judge ordered Ms Dennis to return Sky’s viewing card and pay £1,686.50 in costs on the basis that decoder cards remain the property of Sky at all times and must be returned on request. In this case the broadcaster chose not to pursue a copyright infringement prosecution, which could have seen Ms Dennis pay as much as £65,000.
Alison Dolan, deputy managing director at Sky Business, said: “There are still a small number of licensees who believe they are entitled to screen Sky Sports content in UK pubs and clubs without the correct viewing agreement in place.
Zero tolerance
“There are 116 Premier League matches available live on Sky Sports, which can only be shown in pubs in the UK via a commercial viewing agreement from Sky Business. We will not hesitate to take legal action against those pubs who continue to screen Sky Sports programmes illegally, to help ensure that the thousands of law-abiding pubs and clubs who pay for legitimate commercial Sky subscriptions are not short changed.”
It is the latest in a series of court actions which Sky says is underlining its commitment to crack down on unauthorised broadcasting of its programming. This included a £65,000 fine for First National Wine Bar in Liverpool earlier this month after the bar was found guilty of infringing copyright law by showing Premier League football via a foreign satellite channel.