TVLinks Was Busted for ‘Selling’ Trademarked Goods?

Admin was apparently arrested for suspicion of supplying property with a registered trademark without permission, making the case even more confusing.

Many have wondered how it was possible that TVLinks was busted recently when it all did was merely list links to pirated content and never actually hosted any material.

The Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) accused TVLinks of being guilty of the “facilitation of copyright infringement,” a dubious charge at best because it would mean that any person who links to questionable material could also be responsible for similar “facilitation.” It would have meant that everybody would have to determine the legality of a link’s destination and make for a multitude of legal headaches.

Now it seems that the Gloucestshire police who arrested the 26yo admin of the site have at last confirmed what the charges against him are. According to The Register he was arrested under section 92 of the Trade Mark Act, on suspicion of supplying property with a registered trademark without permission.

The TVLinks case is certain to be an important test case of UK trademark laws because it involves no sale of actual property as the Trade Mark Act was intended to govern. Lawyers for FACT are apparently to argue that the links he posted on his site constitute the “supplying of property with a registered trademark without permission.” The sale involved stems from the fact that visitors click on ads on the site and thus earn the owner a profit.

Struan Robertson, legal eagle at Pinsent Masons, and editor of Out-Law.com shared his amazement with the development in the case, saying that “I’ve never heard of using trademarks law for anything like this.”

“There are criminal provisions in the Trade Marks Act, but they are intended to catch the sale of counterfeit goods, not the supply of a service. I’d be surprised if the provision of links was found to be a criminal offence under the Trade Marks Act.”

Whether or not FACT will prevail in the case obviously remains to be seen, but one thing’s for certain, and that’s that the it will chart new copyright territory for many. For it seems to be the fact that he profited from the site and therefore made a sort of “sale” by linking to trademarked goods that’s the crux of their argument here, meaning that if he simply removed the ads would the TVLinks site have then been legal?

Robertson furthered that “It sounds like they are trying to crow-bar activity that looks wrong into laws that aren’t really designed to deal with it.”

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