English Premier League sues YouTube for copyright violations

By DPA


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New York : The English Premier League sued video-sharing site YouTube for copyright infringement saying it "knowingly misappropriated" its intellectual property by encouraging football footage to be viewed on its site.

The lawsuit presented in a court in New York Friday said that YouTube consciously encouraged people to view content on its site in order to raise its profile, violating the material's commercial value.

"Defendants which own and operate exploited this valuable property for their own gain without payment or licence to the owners of the intellectual property," the lawsuit said.

YouTube, which was bought by Google last year for $1.65 billion, already faces a $1 billion lawsuit from entertainment conglomerate Viacom.

The football lawsuit comes months after the completion of a complex auction, which fetched $2.7 billion for the combined TV, radio and Internet rights for the Premier League over the next three years.

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