Supreme Court will not hear Bell Express Vu appeal of Quebec ruling

OTTAWA – The Supreme Court of Canada has refused to hear a Bell ExpressVu appeal against a judgment which ordered the company to pay millions to Quebecor subsidiaries Videotron and TVA over video piracy.

The Quebec Court of Appeal ruled in March that Bell (TSX:BCE) must pay $137 million, including interest, for failing to prevent the piracy of its satellite signal between 1999 and 2005.

The unanimous appeal court determined that the satellite TV division of BCE’s Bell did not do enough to prevent stolen access to Express Vu’s signal and cost broadcasting partners such as Videotron, Cogeco and Star Choice substantial revenues.

By gaining free access to Bell, viewers could watch Videotron programming at no cost, reducing the number of paid Videotron subscribers and royalties paid to specialty channels of the French-language TVA network that had been distributed by Bell since 1998.

The unanimous ruling by Quebec’s highest court upheld a lower court decision that said the satellite TV division of BCE’s Bell neglected to implement appropriate security to prevent piracy of its ExpressVu service.

However, the province’s top court ordered Bell to pay a bigger penalty, $82.3 million to Videotron and $404,000 to TVA Group, plus interest and experts’ fees.

The appeal judges said, based on its 73 per cent market share in Quebec and the three per cent of “acceptable” pirating, Videotron lost more customers to piracy than Quebec Superior Court Justice Joel Silcoff thought when he came up with his $1-million award.

Quebecor (TSX:QBR.B) chief executive Pierre Dion said at the time the decision shed light on how Videotron and TVA were deprived of substantial revenue because consumers could get TV service through pirated satellite signals rather than paying for cable.

Bell said it strongly disagreed with the ruling and sought leave to appeal it to the Supreme Court.

As usual in leave cases, the justices gave no reasons for refusing to hear the appeal.