Each Premier League football match is filmed so that broadcast rights can be licensed by the FAPL to domestic and foreign broadcasters. The broadcasts are made by encrypted signals via satellite, and the broadcasters supply decoder cards to their customers in their respective territories so that they can receive the broadcasts.

The FAPL grants its licensees the exclusive right to broadcast matches and exploit them economically within their respective broadcasting areas. In order to safeguard this exclusivity, licensees are required by clauses in the licence agreements to prevent their broadcasts from being able to be viewed outside their respective broadcasting areas. In particular, foreign broadcasters are prohibited from supplying non-UK decoder cards for use in the UK.

While the FAPL's main UK and Ireland licensee, BSkyB, provides a dedicated commercial subscription service, some pubs have chosen instead to show matches from broadcasters licensed by the FAPL in other countries, including, most notably, Greece. For these pubs, the obvious disadvantage of non-English commentary is outweighed by the significantly reduced cost, and the ability to show matches at the traditional 3pm Saturday kick-off (BSkyB is not allowed to broadcast matches in this slot, as it might affect attendances for those and other matches, particularly in the lower leagues).

The first case was a High Court copyright infringement action brought by the FAPL against QC Leisure and other importers of foreign decoders. The second (and more notorious) involved Portsmouth landlady Karen Murphy, who was convicted in the magistrates court of dishonestly receiving a programme with intent to avoid payment.

The cases resulted in references to the ECJ for a preliminary ruling on a long list of issues, many involving interpretation of relevant EU Directives concerning television broadcasting and encryption, as well as questions relating to EU free movement and competition rules (www.practicallaw.com/3-382-8656).

Much of the judgment concerns detailed and technical questions of copyright law. For example, the ECJ held that:

These findings mean that the decision is not quite the victory for Ms Murphy made out in some headlines, because pub landlords will still not be able to show Premier League matches without obtaining a licence from the FAPL, as long as the FAPL ensures that its match coverage includes sufficient copyright-protected elements.

The ECJ also ruled that Article 56 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) (which prohibits restrictions on the freedom to provide services from one member state to another) bars UK legislation that makes it unlawful to import, sell and use non-UK decoders that give access to an encrypted satellite broadcasting service from another EU member state, even if procured by giving a false address.

However, the area that has aroused most interest for practitioners is the ECJ's findings on the application of EU competition law to the FAPL's contracts with broadcasters, so far as their aim is to prevent a broadcaster in one territory allowing its broadcasts to be received in another.

In its analysis of the application of the prohibition of anti-competitive agreements in Article 101(1) of the TFEU, the ECJ acknowledged that the FAPL may grant to a sole licensee the exclusive right to broadcast from a member state.

However, the judgment also says that where a licence agreement is designed to prohibit or limit the cross-border provision of broadcasting services, it is deemed to have as its object the restriction of competition. So if a provision enables each broadcaster to be granted absolute territorial exclusivity in the area covered by its licence, it will be prohibited by Article 101(1) of the TFEU.

Agreements that provide absolute territorial exclusivity have been condemned since the very first ECJ judgments in the 1960s. However, the extensive case law aimed at ensuring that customers in one member state always remain free to buy from suppliers in another member state has generally had limited application in relation to licensing of content. The main authority is Coditel (No 2), in which the ECJ held that exclusive territorial licences of copyright in broadcasts do not generally breach the predecessor of Article 101(1) (Case 262/81).

Although the ECJ's judgment specifically concerns only satellite broadcasting and decoder cards, its rationale makes clear that it has broader application to a range of different types of content and media.

It therefore appears that many of the provisions customary in all kinds of content licensing agreements that are aimed at ensuring that licensee territories are, as far as possible, sealed off from each other will now need to be reviewed.

The immediate significance of the case is the impact it has on sports-rights bodies that have for years sold rights to broadcast their events on a country-by-country basis.

An exclusive arrangement for broadcasting rights in one member state may have less value when authorised decoder cards from another country permitting cheaper access may be imported and used by the public.

However, in practice, this may be less significant than at first appears, at least for the FAPL. This is because it remains open to the FAPL to exercise its residual copyright in parts of the broadcasts as a tool to enable it to refuse to authorise UK pubs to show matches from a non-UK broadcaster. Also, even though the FAPL cannot stop private consumers retuning their satellite and set-top boxes to receive foreign broadcasts, this option is unlikely to attract many consumers, as it will cause them to lose their UK Sky signal.

From the perspective of other content owners seeking to license and exploit their rights, the decision undoubtedly has an impact on what models they can use. Even if they grant an exclusive licence into a territory (if such terms are permitted), they will, at the very least, not be able to require third parties to restrict importation of decoder cards, and this will dilute the benefits of exclusivity.

There are a number of contractual mechanisms which rights-holders may wish to employ to seek to maintain a degree of exclusivity, and these are likely to be tested in the courts over the coming years. Many will try to employ the long-standing distinction between preventing active sales and marketing, and banning passive, unsolicited sales: the former is generally considered acceptable under EU competition law.

Other issues likely to be debated between rights-holders and licensees include limiting language versions (so that licensing is by reference to language groups, not countries) and the permitted scope of geo-blocking (requiring a licensee to block access to online content to users in certain territories).

Football Association Premier League Ltd. and others v QC Leisure and others; Karen Murphy v Media Protection Services Ltd, Joined Cases C-403/08 and C-429/08.