TV3 has exclusive rights to New Zealand TV broadcasting of the World Cup.
Rugby World Cup rights holder TV3 intends to take action against any Sky TV show it believes breaches its exclusive agreement to screen Cup footage.
The pay-TV station was yesterday hit with an interim High Court injunction preventing it using TV3 material on its sports shows.
The ban
applies to Sport 365 Highlights, The Cup and Rugby Highlights.
TV3, understood to have paid millions for exclusive rights to the tournament, claimed Sky was using footage outside the terms of a "news access agreement" between TV3, Sky and Television New Zealand.
The agreement allows the broadcasters to use TV3 World Cup footage for news.
TV3's lawyer, Julian Miles, QC, told Justice Helen Winkelman that Sky had been using footage in a "magazine style" format.
The injunction remains in force at least until a full High Court hearing tomorrow. Mr Miles last night told the Herald the station would on Friday try to stop all Sky sports shows using its World Cup footage.
The "primary" aim of the hearing was to see injunctions imposed on Sky, rather than damages being awarded, he said.
TV3 would likely target other shows such as The Crowd Goes Wild, the half-hour form of Sport 365 and Rugby: Re-Union, which all escaped injunction yesterday.
In court, Mr Miles said the use of footage in magazine-style shows did not count as current events reporting, "it merely becomes the anchoring of a chat show".
TV3 was the legitimate provider of Rugby World Cup rights, and Sky was simply trying to build its own legitimacy at TV3's expense, he said.
"We are not stopping them reporting as a current event ... what we are preventing them from doing is cheating."
Sky TV's lawyer, Graeme Hall, told the court the matter could be sorted out in the form of damages, rather than by an injunction, particularly as TV3 had earlier offered to sell Sky rights for some footage for $1 million.
But Sky TV chief executive John Fellett was not worried by the court action.
He said Sky had its own crews in France and had solid rugby contacts, having covered the sport "12 months out of the year".
"Having the exclusive rights to live sporting events doesn't guarantee a blackout of coverage," he said.
