Madras High Court restrains websites from illegally broadcasting FIFA World Cup 2022

Madras High Court restrains websites from illegally broadcasting FIFA World Cup 2022

The matter will be heard on December 16

The Madras High Court has granted an interim injunction in favor of Viacom18 and restrained more than 12,000 websites from illegally broadcasting the FIFA World Cup 2022.

In the Viacom18 Media Private Limited vs Bharath Sanchar Nigam Limited and others case, the court stated that Viacom had proved it held sole ownership of the copyright for the event.

The bench of Justice M Sundar observed, "There is no difficulty in accepting prima facie that the plaintiff is the owner of the copyright in the sporting event. In terms of the balance of convenience, if this interim order is not granted, it would result in alleged piracy being completed in every aspect."

Viacom18 had filed a suit before the court submitting a letter issued by FIFA, claiming it had the exclusive rights to broadcast the FIFA World Cup 2022 in Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. This included television, broadband transmission, mobile transmissions, and non-exclusive radio rights.

Viacom also shared a list of around 12,037 websites, claiming they were infringing upon its exclusive copyrights.

Thus, Justice Sundar restrained the respondent websites, internet service providers, and other entities from infringing on Viacom's copyright over the sporting event. He also gave liberty to the respondent ISPs to block the infringing websites.

The bench ruled it was being done, "To prevent copying, transmitting, communicating, displaying, releasing, showing, hosting, streaming, uploading, downloading, and exhibiting the sporting event."