Beatles documentary silenced after UK court ruling
Record label Sony/ATV Music Publishing has successfully blocked a documentary film detailing the first ever concert on US shores by The Beatles from being released in the UK and US.
In a judgment handed down on Wednesday, July 1, the English High Court ruled that WPMC, the company that made the film, had infringed Sony/ATV’s copyright because the film contained eight songs to which the company owns the copyright.
The film, called “The Beatles: The Lost Concert”, was based on 35 minutes of footage of a concert that the band performed in Washington, DC in 1964.
Additional footage, including photos and interviews, was used to create the full 92-minute documentary.
Although the documentary had been made in the UK, the defendant’s target market was the US.
In 2012, Sony/ATV filed claims for infringement of both UK and US copyright and was granted an interim injunction later that year that stopped the documentary from being released in both countries pending a decision.
In Wednesday’s judgement, Justice Richard Arnold said he had to decide on whether a synchronisation licence had been granted to WPMC and whether the exploitation of the documentary in the US would have fallen foul of US copyright laws.
WPMC claimed its actions amounted to fair use.
But in his judgment Arnold backed Sony/ATV’s claim that it owned the copyright to eight of the 12 songs that featured in the concert.
The songs were: “From Me To You”; “I Saw Her Standing There”; “This Boy”; “All My Loving”; “I Wanna Be Your Man”; “She Loves You”; “I Want To Hold Your Hand”; and “Twist And Shout”.
Arnold wrote: “The copyright works are expressive works within the core of copyright protection; the use is a commercial one.”
He added that a fair use claim would not stand up because “the use is only partly transformative” and the works “are reproduced in their entirety”.
“To permit such use would be likely to damage the market for, or potential value of, the copyright works,” Arnold wrote.
Arnold also referenced a series of emails between Christopher Hunt, the former director of WPMC, and Karina Masters, Sony/ATV’s head of synchronisation and marketing.
Although the two had discussed terms of a potential agreement, final approval had not been granted.
In fact, Arnold wrote, one email was expressly stated to be “subject to signed contract”.
“It follows that there is no reason to depart from the conventional meaning of that expression in this case,” Arnold added.
Arnold said the emails had made it “crystal clear” that Sony/ATV did not intend to be bound by an agreement unless and until a contract was signed.
“I conclude that Sony/ATV succeed in their claims for infringement (or threatened infringement) of the UK and US copyrights,” he explained.
Neither Sony/ATV nor Alastair Wilson, a barrister representing WPMC, had responded to a request for comment at the time of publication, but we will update the story should either party get in touch.
