MPS v Karen Murphy

Case Summary  |   1 June 2008

Karen Murphy, a publican, was convicted for offences contrary to s.297(1) CDPA 1988 for screening live Premier League football matches on TV sets at her public house using a satellite decoding card supplied by a Greek broadcaster and for not paying any fee to the broadcaster that had the exclusive right to broadcast the matches in the UK. The card was not a pirate card but a genuine decoder card despite the fact that it had been used outside the authorised area. She appealed by way of case stated against part of the decision of the Crown Court to uphold her conviction. She sought a reference to the ECJ in relation to her appeal as she wanted to raise points of defence based on Directive 98/84 and free movement principles of EC law to support her defence that the decoder was not an illicit device under s.297(1) CDPA 1988. The court held that the questions of EC law should be referred to the ECJ and that this should (ideally) be heard at the same time as the reference from the case of Football Association Premier League Ltd v QC Leisure [2008] EWHC 1411 as there was sufficient overlap of issues raised. In the Premier League case the Claimants (the FA who organised the filming of the Premier League and licensed the rights to broadcast them, a sub-licensee in Greece which broadcast the matches and the company that operated the platform on which the matches were broadcast by the sub-licensee) sued the defendants who had allegedly supplied foreign decoder cards to bars and pubs in the UK which enabled access to foreign transmissions of live matches. Martin Howe QC appeared for Karen Murphy and James Mellor QC for MPS in the hearing in June 2008.