Analysis: landlords may not benefit from Premier League case
04 October 2011
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Simon Crompton, London
Publicans who raised a glass to celebrate today’s ruling from the Court of Justice on Premier League matches might find they choke on their drink by the time they reach paragraph 183
Initial readings of the judgment suggested a clear victory for pub landlord Karen Murphy based on the Court's conclusion that national laws or contractual restrictions that prevent the use of decoder cards for receiving football broadcasts are incompatible with the EU Treaty and anti-competitive.
This could allow English pubs, for example, to use decoder cards from elsewhere in Europe to screen matches - as long as they don't show elements of the coverage such as opening sequences and commentary, in which copyright could subsist.
But in a remarkable statement at the end of the judgment, the Court rules that copyright does exist in the broadcast signal.
In this it...
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