The England & Wales High Court makes referral to the EU Court on Justice on whether the prohibition of foreign sports broadcasters from supplying decoder cards in the UK is based on concerted practices and contrary to the Conditional Access Directive (Karen Murphy / Media Protection Services Limited)

Brief summary of facts The UK's Premier League (PL) owns the intellectual property rights relating to the screening of Premier League football matches. The defendant, Ms Murphy, was the landlady of a public house in Southsea, Hampshire. On becoming the licensee, she cancelled its GBP 6,000 (EUR 6,600)-a- year subscription with the satellite broadcaster, BSkyB, which had the exclusive licence to screen live Premier League football matches in the UK. She paid for a satellite dish, decoder and decoder card which enabled her, for GBP 800 (EUR 880) a year, to receive broadcasts of live Premier League games from Nova, a Greek television-provider, which was PL's licensee for Greece. BSkyB personnel had originally filmed the matches for onward transmission to viewers. The sequence of images,