2022-01-25
25 January 2022Alex Baldwin

Four Tet fails to secure record rights in copyright spat

Kieran Hebden, who performs as electronic musician Four Tet, has failed to convince the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court to amend certain claims in a copyright spat with  Domino over his master recordings.

Hebden claimed that Domino had recently breached contractual obligations of a recording agreement he had signed with Domino in 2001, and looked to amend his legal complaint against them to include this recent conduct.

The recording agreement obliged Hebden to provide certain recordings to Domino within a specified period and assigned the copyright of the master recordings to Domino.

However, this did not include streaming and digital downloads of these recordings, Hebden had claimed.

As a result, Hebden submitted a complaint to the UK Intellectual Property Office in December 2020, accusing Domino of breaching contractual obligations by hosting digital versions of his masters on digital music services, which Domino had “failed to account for” in the 2001 agreement.

Domino offered to pay sums corresponding to damages sought under Hebden’s claim and informed him that it had instructed all digital service providers to withdraw the masters.

It also pledged not to exploit the masers digitally in the future without agreeing to terms with Hebden, but was not keen to agree to the 50% rate claimed by Hebden for “exploitation”.

However, Hebden considered Domino’s conduct in withdrawing the masters from the digital music services and stating that it would not exploit them digitally in future to be a “fundamental breach” of the 2001 agreement.

Hebden then applied for permission to amend the claims of his complaint to include claims relating to this recent conduct, but Domino’s solicitors did not consent to these proposed amendments.

Domino also argued that Hebden’s amendments should be dismissed because they were pursued for an “improper collateral purpose”, designed to “exert pressure” on domino to assign the copyright in the masters to Hebden, rather than to vindicate any legal right alleged in the claim.

Amended application denied

In a  judgment handed down by the court on December 19, judge Pat Treacy refused the majority of Hebden’s amended application but granted Hebden permission to amend one set of pleadings concerned with effective terms of the agreement.

Specifically, Hebden wanted to amend his case to plea that the agreement should be construed as including an “express continuing obligation to use reasonable endeavours to exploit the masters by all then-industry-standard means”.

Tracey said: “Given the potential consequences for Mr Hebden of refusing permission to amend when I have concluded that the amendments are not simply fanciful and have at least some prospect of success, I consider that I would not be doing justice between the parties if I refused permission.”

Treacy also refused Hebden’s proposition to launch a copyright infringement case against Domino as it “relied on the 2001 Agreement being void as from the outset”.

“I reached this view in part on the basis of the significant legal difficulties such a case would face as well as the difficulties Mr Hebden faces in obtaining a useful remedy likely to give the claim utility in the context of the action as a whole,” Treacy said.

He continued: “Additional considerations are the likely disproportionate cost and time burdens on the parties of preparing for such a claim (which is in any event only a tertiary fall back, with limited prospects of success), the additional pressure on court resources in dealing with it, and fairness for other litigants.”

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