MONTREAL — Bell is no longer accusing Vidéotron of pirating Crave TV.
A month after filing a $100-million copyright and trademark infringement lawsuit saying Vidéotron was continuing to give subscribers of The Movie Network access to associated video-on-demand content without an agreement from Bell, the companies have quietly come to an agreement, they both confirmed to Cartt.ca.
"The legal case is being discontinued," said Bell Media publicist Adam Slinn.
The suit, which listed about 2,700 individual episodes and movies that were available on demand and demanded $20,000 for each one, was filed November 2, two days after a deadline set by Bell and a day after The Movie Network was merged with Crave TV, making a subscription to Bell's over-the-top SVOD service automatic with a subscription to the TV network through a participating provider.
With an agreement in place, subscribers to Crave on Vidéotron can now login and access Crave content on crave.ca.
It's unclear what impact the new agreement will have on Crave as far as packaging. Vidéotron's website has moved Crave and its French equivalent Super Écran from the "premium" section to "other specialty" and set their à la carte prices at $20 and $17 a month, respectively, up from $15 each before the new agreement. The category change makes it harder to include Crave in Videotron's build-your-own packages without paying extra fees.
Other details of the new agreement were not released, including its length.
