Barbara Gayle, Staff ReporterTEN CABLE operators in the Corporate Area and St. Catherine have filed an appeal against a Supreme Court order barring them from removing the SportsMax channel from subscribers.
The injunction is to remain in force until SportsMax's civil suit against them has been determined.
SportsMax filed a suit against the operators claiming that in 2004 it entered into an agreement with them but they have breached the Fair Competition Act .
The defendants have denied breaching the Act. Justice Andrew Rattray after hearing legal arguments last month said there were serious issues to be tried with regard to the alleged breaches of the Act. He then granted the injunction which barred the cable operators from preventing or diminishing the quality of viewer access to SportsMax's channel.
EXCLUSIVE RIGHTS
SportsMax, which is being represented by attorneys-at-law Dave Garcia and Sanya Young from the law firm Myers, Fletcher and Gordon, said in its claim that it had exclusive rights from its parent company Inter-national Media Content (IMC) which is the holder of broadcast for several sports including select National Basketball Association (NBA). SportsMax is contending that through IMC it paid significant sums of money to purchase the exclusive rights to be able to broadcast the NBA games in Jamaica as well as other sporting events.
It claims that although it informed the operators of its exclusive rights, several of the cable operators televised an NBA game on ESPN to which SportsMax had sole broadcast rights. Sportsmax said in July 2005, the cable operators informed it that they took the decision to remove that channel.
Attorneys-at-law Maurice Manning and Georgia Gibson-Henlin who are representing the cable operators, objected to an injunction on the ground that SportsMax did not show that it had any legal or equitable right which required protection by way of an injunction. They argued that any ownership rights to broadcast the programmes did not rest with SportsMax but with its alleged parent company.
The cable operators are appealing on the grounds that the judge wrongly exercised his discretion when he granted the injunction. They are contending that the judge erred when he said in his finding that SportsMax had a right in law or in equity that needed to be protected.
The cable operators are Entertainment Systems Ltd., Allied Cable Vision Ltd., Sauce Communications Network Ltd., Telstar Cable Ltd., Omni Cable services Ltd., Logic One Ltd., D&L Cable and Satellite Ltd., Oliver Electronics Engineering Ltd., Starcom Cablevision Ltd and Abacus Communications Ltd.
