Qatar’s beIN Sports has been in a protracted battle with ‘signal pirates’ for quite some time now.

The Qatar-based TV channel, which holds regional broadcast rights to several top sporting events, has been at the receiving end of a high-profile signal-piracy operation, believed to be based out of Saudi Arabia.

While top sports bodies around the world have come out in support of beIN Sports, the piracy has continued unchecked.

It led to the channel filing a $1bn lawsuit against Saudi Arabia at the World Trade Organisation (WTO). 

And now, Qatar has just stepped up its fight for justice at the WTO with a request for adjudication of its complaint that Riyadh had violated its intellectual property rights, reported Gulf Times.

Qatar launched the dispute in October, saying Saudi Arabia was blocking beIN and refusing to take effective action against the piracy of beIN content by a sophisticated pirate operation called ‘beoutQ.’

Qatar’s latest WTO filing, dated November 9 and published yesterday, said Saudi Arabia had refused to meet Qatari officials to try to resolve the dispute, as required by WTO rules, reported Reuters.

A Saudi government communications office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Saudi officials had previously said the country was taking action to combat piracy and was committed to protecting intellectual property rights.

The request for a WTO adjudication panel reiterated Qatar’s original complaint and also argued that beoutQ was violating not only Qatar’s rights but those of many other countries, whose TV programmes could now be watched for free in Saudi Arabia.

“The IPTV applications on beoutQ set-top boxes provide access, in the territory of Saudi Arabia, to hundreds of television channels and thousands of on-demand programs from around the world, without the authorisation of the intellectual property right holders,” Qatar's latest filing said, referring to applications for so-called Internet Protocol television.