Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. v British Telecommunications Plc
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Mr Justice Adam Johnson |
| Judgment Date | 20 December 2021 |
| Neutral Citation | [2021] EWHC 3438 (Ch) |
| Court | Chancery Division |
| Docket Number | Case No: IL-2021-000073 |
[2021] EWHC 3438 (Ch)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
BUSINESS & PROPERTY COURTS OF ENGLAND & WALES
INTELLECTUAL PROERTY LIST (ChD)
Royal Courts of Justice
Rolls Building
Fetter Lane
London
Mr Justice Adam Johnson
Case No: IL-2021-000073
Richard Spearman QC (instructed by Wiggin LLP) for the Applicants
Approved Judgment
I direct no official shorthand note shall be taken of this Judgment and that copies of this version as handed down may be treated as authentic.
The Applicants are the owners of the copyright in motion pictures and television programme content. They seek an Order from the Court designed to prevent the infringement of their copyright in such content. They do so by means of an application made on the papers. In support of the application, I have received detailed written submissions from Mr Richard Spearman QC.
The infringers are not the Respondents, who are all internet service providers (“ ISPs”). Instead, the infringers are said to be certain websites, referred to in the application made to me as the “ Target Websites”. The business of the Target Websites involves making available audio-visual content to end-users in the manner I shall describe briefly below. As to the Respondents, they have all been notified of the present application and have indicated they do not oppose it.
According to the evidence, the Target Websites are currently located at the following domains:
i) 0123movies.net;
ii) 1-2-3movies.com;
iii) 123movies.vu / 123-movies.gy;
iv) 123moviesfree.love;
v) cmovies.ac / cmovies.online;
vi) flixhq.ru;
vii) fmovies.co;
viii) gototub.com;
ix) hurawatch.ru;
x) onionplay.se;
xi) sflix.to;
xii) soap2day.video;
xiii) tvshows88.com;
xiv) watchserieshd.ru; and
xv) zoechip.com.
The Applicants seek relief under section 97A(1) Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (“ CDPA”). The relief is in the form of an order directed to the Respondent ISPs, requiring them to block (or at least attempt to block) access to the Target Websites.
Section 97A(1) provides as follows:
“(1) The High Court (in Scotland, the Court of Session) shall have power to grant an injunction against a service provider, where that service provider has actual knowledge of another person using their service to infringe copyright.”
There is no doubt that the Respondents are “ service providers”, within the meaning of this subsection. In order to grant the relief sought, I therefore need to be satisfied (1) that the Target Websites are infringing the Applicants' copyright, (2) that the Target Websites use the Respondents' services to do so, and (3) the Respondents are aware of such infringement. If those conditions are satisfied, then I need to consider whether the Order sought is proportionate and should be made as a matter of discretion.
In support of their application, the Applicants rely on the Witness Statement of Rachel Lesley Alexander, a partner in the firm of Wiggin LLP. Ms Alexander in her evidence describes the business of the Target Websites.
They all have essentially the same mode of operation. They enable users to stream motion pictures and television programme content. This is in fact achieved by the Target Websites indexing and aggregating links to unauthorised copies of such content hosted on third party locations. Thus, technically speaking, the Target Websites do not themselves host or transmit the content. Instead, it is accessed by users through an embedded player on the Target Website. The Target Websites though arrange and index the available content in a user-friendly way, so that it can be searched for and accessed easily. And from the user perspective, the content appears to stream directly through the Target Website.
The available content includes copyright works that are owned by the Applicants or their group companies. None of the Target Websites, however, has been licensed or authorised by any of the Applicants to make their motion pictures and/or television content available to the public. All of the target Websites generate profit through advertising, and thus operate...
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