The International Broadcaster Coalition Against Piracy (IBCAP) announced the filing of a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas against the operators of the illegal streaming service known as Lemo TV and Kemo IPTV.
The lawsuit was coordinated by IBCAP and filed by IBCAP member DISH Network.
The service, also offered through several resellers under white-label brands, is accused of directly infringing on IBCAP member copyrights by illegally transmitting copyrighted television programs aired on 22 different channels.
Monitoring via Lab
All evidence for the case was obtained and provided by the IBCAP lab, which is outfitted with technologies designed to detect and monitor incidences of piracy to build evidence that is cited in complaints such as this one.
“This lawsuit is the latest example of our lab’s ability to identify the pirate services that are significantly infringing our members’ content and stack-rank such services in order to target and remove the worst infringers,” said Chris Kuelling, executive director of IBCAP
Infringement notices ignored
The complaint alleges that despite receiving approximately 100 notices of infringement from IBCAP since February 2021, Lemo TV and Kemo IPTV continued to illegally stream protected content. During the first quarter of 2025, the service accounted for almost 30% of all unauthorized streams detected on set-top box and IPTV services monitored by the IBCAP lab.
Damages sought
The complaint seeks statutory damages of up to $150,000 for the willful infringement of 171 registered works, amounting to a potential total of more than $25 million.
In addition, the complaint seeks profits attributable to the infringement of potentially thousands of unregistered works, an injunction prohibiting the service and associated parties from operating or supporting infringement, an order requiring the transfer of domain names used by the service and the recovery of reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs.
The complaint also requests discovery on a number of entities that will likely lead to the identification of the currently unnamed defendants, a legal tactic successfully used in past cases to identify the operators behind pirate services.
Further reading
DISH Network LLC (Plaintiff) v. Does 1-10, dba Lemo TV and Kemo IPTV (Defendants). Complaint. Document 1. Case 4:25-cv-01587. Filed April 7, 2025. US District Court for the Southern District of Texas
Why it matters
“Lemo TV and Kemo IPTV currently account for more than a quarter of the unauthorized streams on STBs and IPTV services monitored by our lab. This level of theft is unacceptable for our members, and we will put a swift stop to it—just as we have successfully done with numerous other pirate services through court-ordered injunctions,” said Executive Director Kuelling
