Pirates Beware! Zuffa Files Lawsuit Against Justin.tv For Alleged Illegal UFC Video Uploading

Zuffa, LLC, owner of the Ultimate Fighting Championship brand announced on Friday that it filed a lawsuit against Justin.tv, Inc. for copyright and trademark infringement in United States District Court for the District of Nevada arising from Justin.tv’s alleged repeated and ongoing failure to meaningfully address the rampant and illegal uploading of video of live Pay-Per-View UFC events by members and users of the Justin.tv website.

The Justin.tv website enables anyone with an Internet connection to broadcast live streaming video to an unlimited audience.  Although purportedly developed to bring user-generated content to a large live audience, Zuffa claims that the Justin.tv website is routinely exploited by users to broadcast illegally uploaded content, including UFC events.

For example, on Oct. 23, 2010, over 50,000 people watched live streaming feeds of the UFC 121 Pay-Per-View event, according to Zuffa’s claims. Third-party contractors hired and paid for by Zuffa, removed more than 200 infringing live streams of UFC 121 from the Justin.tv website.  Zuffa states that this piracy represents a significant loss of revenue to Zuffa and its mobile, online, cable, and satellite distribution partners each year.

“Zuffa has attempted to work on numerous occasions with Justin.tv over nearly a two-year period to encourage it to prevent or limit its infringing activities,” Zuffa’s Las Vegas attorney, Donald J. Campbell said. “Regrettably, Justin.tv has not only turned a blind eye to the massive online piracy occurring on its website, we believe it has actually induced its users to commit copyright infringement thus leaving Zuffa no alternative but to take this fight to the courts.”

Zuffa is the largest provider of Pay-Per-View content in the world, and delivers fight cards to fans in over 354 million households across 145 countries and territories. Zuffa encourages the development of new technology to deliver UFC content to licensed online platforms, mobile devices, and gaming systems.  However, Zuffa does not condone the use of streaming video or other new technologies to violate intellectual property laws, and it will vigorously protect its copyrighted content against piracy in any medium.