Hello Readers!! There has been a lot that has been brewing over the past few weeks with respect to Trademarks. We have decided to recapitulate the trademark news which have recently hit the headlines in our segment, Weekly Trends. Let us take a quick look at what happened in the past weeks, with this weekly update.
Dish Tv India restrained from operating in Middle East and North Africa
As you may or may not know Dish TV India Ltd.was caught in a copyright infringement suit involving one U.A.E. based company Gulf DTH FZ LLC (OSN) with respect to its Direct-To-Home (DTH) services. To be specific Gulf DTH FZ LLC (OSN) had claimed the alleged illegal commercial exploitation of the satellite spillover signals in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Recently a division bench of the Delhi High Court consisting of Justices Pradeep Nandrajog and Pratibha Rani dismissed Dish TV’s appeal in the matter.
The suit detailed that OSN had the legitimate broadcast right licensed to it from various copyright owners to broadcast certain content and programmed in Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Chad, Djibouti, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen. The appellant in this case i.e. Dish TV had similar rights granted to it for the region of Sri Lanka and India. However, Dish TV was illegally transmitting the same channels and content in the OSN territory, without obtaining appropriating licenses and by taking advantage of the satellite spillover from three satellites being used by it to broadcast its signal across India and Sri Lanka. In fact Dish TV went a step little further and was also involved in “…illegitimate sale of Dish TV STBs, Smart Cards as well as recharge services by the re-sellers/dealers. Ledgers and Smart Card numbers for 22,000 customers from one shop alone were obtained.”
The Court also made another observation of the fact that the accounts of the appellant i.e. Dish TV showed a revenue of Rs. 157 crores from the OSN territory alone, in the previous year, which by no means was a meagre amount.
Taking into consideration the aforementioned facts the Court ruled in favour of OSN.
Sources : 1,
Authored By- Anchita Sharma
Image source/ Attribution here, Governed BY Creative Commons License CC BY- SA 3.0
