MONTREAL – Today the Federal Court of appeal swiftly turned away an appeal of an injunction that blocks the sale of preloaded TV boxes which allow users unauthorized access to TV programming in Canada.
In July, Bell, Rogers and Vidéotron were granted an injunction against 11 defendants who were selling Android-powered boxes which were pre loaded with software that delivers unauthorized TV signals to users who purchased the box – but did not pay for any of the programming. Companies with names such as iTVBox.net, My Electronics, Android Bros Inc., WatchNSaveNow Inc. and MtlFreeTV.com were often marketing the devices to consumers as a conduit to free TV or to cut their cable bill.
Today the court heard their lawyers’ arguments to lift the injunction, saying it couldn’t be proved that Bell, Rogers and Videotron were being caused “irreparable harm” due to the activities of the Android box sellers and so the injunction was not required.
The court heard the case today and issued a decision. “In our view, in light of the uncontradicted evidence including the advertisement that these pre-loaded set top boxes are a way to access free TV content and avoid cable bills, the Federal Court was entitled to draw the inferences that it did,” wrote judge Johanne Gauthier in a two-page decision. “What the appellants are seeking is that this Court re-weighs the evidence and substitutes its own assessment to that of the Federal Court. It is not our role to do so, given that the appellants have not persuaded us that the Federal Court made an overriding and palpable error in evaluating the voluminous evidence before it.”
So, the appeal was dismissed with $5,000 in costs awarded.
