IPTV Box Reseller Facing $1.6 Million Damages Claim

• IPTV box and service reseller received an order of permanent injunction from the U.S. District Court of Texas.
• The plaintiffs, ABS-CBN Corporation, are also requesting the granting of a damage compensation of $1.6 million.
• The defendant was openly selling illegal services on Facebook and was receiving money on PayPal.

A Texas man named Anthony Brown has received an order of permanent injunction against himself and his business, preventing him from selling pre-configured pirate IPTV set-top boxes on Facebook or any other online platform. The man was identified back in December 2018 by plaintiffs ABS-CBN Corporation, which launched a civil action case against him.

Brown was selling pirate boxes to people using the nickname “Ann Ong,” and he was receiving the money for the illegal transaction through his company’s PayPal address. An undercover operation exposed his activities, so a legal case could be substantiated.

Initially, the plaintiffs requested the awarding of statutory damages of a total of $2,100,000 for violations of the Communications and the Lanham Acts. The defendant has failed to respond to the submitted complaint for over a year, so the case moved to the “default judgment” step with the allegations automatically deemed admitted. For some reason, the plaintiffs decided to lower the requested statutory damage by half a million, so the new total was set to a still “heavy” $1,600,000.

The ABS-CBN Corporation’s legal team has claimed once again that the defendant has repeatedly infringed their two trademarks in two distinct services, one in cable and one in an online streaming platform. Allegedly, A. Brown was using their brand marks to promote his services and also the TV boxes, creating confusion to the buyers as to whether these are of illicit nature or not, and even suggesting that there’s a form of endorsement or sponsorship from the real broadcasters. The defendant was obviously never licensed or authorized to use these trademarks, so this is a case of counterfeiting and infringement.

While the U.S. District Court of Texas hasn’t rejected the plaintiffs’ compensation demands yet, the order that was published only deals with the permanent injunction. This essentially closes down Brown’s illegal business, but until he’s called to pay anything, he can continue to enjoy the fruits of his Facebook market.

Brown is yet another one of these weird cases of IPTV sellers not taking even the basic precautions to hide their real identity from the authorities and the rightsholders, and it has ended up in the typical way.