Colombia Pictures Industries, Inc & Ors v British Telecommunications Plc & Ors, Ch Div (Meade J) 17/7/22

Orders were made under s.97A Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 requiring the respondent ISPs to block access to certain websites which were enabling the infringement of copyright in the claimant movie studios’ films. The orders represented an extension of the type of relief which had been granted previously, addressing the problem that following a conventional order, websites with different but very similar domain names picked up the blocked web traffic, with the result that the conventional orders were being circumvented. The solution was to grant blocking orders against a list of websites which had similar but not identical names to those subject to conventional blocking orders, with certain conditions imposed.