Quebecor Media today expressed satisfaction with the unanimous judgement handed down by the Québec Court of Appeal on March 6, 2015 ordering Bell ExpressVu Limited Partnership, a subsidiary of Bell, to pay $82.3 million to Videotron GP (Videotron) and $404,000 to TVA Group Inc. (TVA Group) for having deliberately neglected to implement an appropriate security system to prevent piracy of the signals broadcast by its satellite television service between 1999 and 2005, although it knew and must have foreseen that this would cause serious harm to its competitors, including its main rival in Québec, Videotron. The Québec Court of Appeal ordered Bell to pay Videotron and TVA Group a total amount of $137 million, including interest and experts’ fees.

We welcome this judgement, which condemns practices by Bell that had the effect of depriving its competitors, including Videotron and TVA Group, of customers and substantial revenues over a period of more than six years. This is a landmark decision and an historic event for the telecommunications industry, a ruling that sheds some light on how Bell did harm to other industry players.