D.MURUGESAN, J.

1. The controversy arising in these appeals is as to whether this Court is having jurisdiction to entertain a suit in respect of dispute/disputes relating to the infringement of copyright and piracy in the wake of Section 15 of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India Act, 1997, which bars the civil Court to entertain any suit or proceeding in respect of any matter which the Appellate Tribunal constituted under Section 14 of the Act would be empowered to determine.

2. The following are the few facts that are necessary for the disposal of these appeals. For convenience, the parties are referred to as arrayed in the civil suits.

3. The pleadings in C.S.No.963 of 2009 are as follows. M/s Sun TV Network Limited (hereinafter referred to as “the first plaintiff”) is a leading Television Network in South India. Sun TV is one of its channels and is the number one channel in Tamil Nadu when it comes to viewership. The first plaintiff also runs other channels in Tamil, namely, K.TV, Sun Music, Sun News, etc. The first plaintiff had devised the system of uplinking various programmes to satellite and facilitate the downloading of such programmes by authorized Multi System Operators (MSOs). In order to download the signals of the first plaintiff’s channels, they had authorized persons in various areas across the whole of India through the second plaintiff, namely, M/s Channel Plus (hereinafter referred to as “the second plaintiff”) and for that purpose, subscription agreements were entered into. Only such subscribing persons were entitled to receive the signals of the first plaintiff’s channels for onward transmission to the cable TV operators. Any other person who receives such signals and/or uses it for further broadcast/transmission would be deemed to have infringed their copyright and is also liable for prosecution for the offences under the provisions of the Copyright Act, 1957 and other relevant statutes, apart from payment of damages and penalty.

4. The first defendant, namely, M/s Jak Communications Private Limited had entered into a settlement agreement dated 7. 2009 with the second plaintiff and in pursuance of the said settlement, the second plaintiff handed over decoders to the first defendant for distribution of the signals in Kancheepuram Town. Thereafter, the first defendant stopped making payments and returned the decoders issued to them alleging that the second plaintiff did not comply with the terms of the settlement agreement. Having returned the decoders for Kancheepuram, the first defendant had been supplying the signals to its operators illegally not only in Kancheepuram Town, but also to the other operators in Kancheepuram and Tiruvannamalai Districts, the areas/districts which were not even covered under the agreement. Hence the second plaintiff issued notice to the first defendant and in spite of the same, the first defendant continued to distribute the signals illegally. On the ground that the first defendant had been illegally pirating the signals from their Avadi head-end to the other areas of Kancheepuram and Tiruvannamalai Districts by using the decoder boxes and cards and that the other defendants viz.,2 to 97 were only cable operators who did not have any subscription agreement with the plaintiffs and/or with their distributors to tap/receive the signals of the channels, both the plaintiffs filed the above civil suit for a judgment and decree of permanent and prohibitory injunction restraining the defendants/its agents and attached cable operators, head-ends, or anyone from taking link from them and their partners or proprietors and all others in capacity of principal or agent acting for and on their behalf from in any manner violating and infringing the Broadcast Reproduction Rights as well as the Copyright in the programmes telecast by the first plaintiff by illegally tapping/receiving/recording the signals of Sun TV, KTV, Sun Music, Sun News, Gemini TV and Teja TV and tran