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She shoots, she scores - or does she?

At last the eagerly anticipated judgment in the long running Karen Murphy case has been handed down by the European Court of Justice.

Karen Murphy of the Red, White & Blue Public House in Southsea, was prosecuted for screening Premier League games through a foreign satellite provider. She appealed to the High Court who then referred the matter to the ECJ to determine the compatibility of English law with the free movement principles of EU law.

The ECJ has this morning stated that:

"national legislation which prohibits the import, sale or use of foreign decoder cards is contrary to the freedom to provide services and cannot be justified either in light of the objective of protecting intellectual property rights or by the objective of encouraging the public to attend football stadiums."

In the first instance this would appear to be a green light for the use of EU based foreign decoder cards. However, importantly, the ECJ further decided that although the live matches themselves are not protected by copyright law (a separate argument put forward by the Premier League), other parts of the transmission will be such as the opening video sequence and the Premier League anthem etc. Therefore, for showing these elements, the permission of the rights holder (Premier League) will be required. This may enable the Premier League to seek to protect its rights in a different way in the future. Foreign decoder suppliers may well have to ‘doctor' their broadcasts to ensure omission of such copyrighted elements.

The full ramifications of the judgment remain to be seen, particularly in relation to how the Premier League will sell its rights in the future and to whom.

Further, and equally important for the moment, the judgment is only a guidance to the High Court, which must now decide on the ruling's impact on the Murphy case. For those publicans looking to start using foreign decoder cards immediately, it may be prudent to wait for the dust to settle.

So not the final whistle... we are in extra time but closer to a result.

A link to the ECJ press release can be found here.

As a final point, and as stated above, this case has no impact on those decoders originating outside the EU and we are aware of a number of these.