Oberster Gerichtshof, UPC Telekabel, 4 Ob 6/12d, May 11, 2012

(1) UPC Telekabel appealed on a point of law to the Supreme Court a decision form a lower court ordering Telekable to block access to an illegal movie streaming website (see below).

(2) In support of its appeal, UPC Telekabel submited inter alia that its services could not be considered to be used to infringe a copyright or related right within the meaning of Article 8(3) of Directive 2001/29 because it did not have any business relationship with the operators of the website at issue and it was not established that its own customers acted unlawfully. In any event, UPC Telekabel claims that the various blocking measures which may be introduced can all be technically circumvented and that some of them are excessively costly.

(3) The Court decided to stay the proceedings and to refer questions to the European Court of Justice for a preliminary ruling.