Castles (Not) Made Of Sand

Noel Redding Estate Ltd and another v Sony Music Entertainment UK Ltd [2025] EWCA Civ 66

This morning (Thursday, 6 February), the Court of Appeal rejected Sony’s appeal against the High Court’s refusal to grant summary judgment or strike out an action brought against Sony by the estates of the former bass player and drummer of the Jimi Hendrix Experience. The case relates to a claim brought by the two musicians’ estates in relation to money made by Sony from streaming services such as Amazon Prime and Spotify, which clearly didn’t exist when the band entered into its various agreements. Sony claimed that the High Court Judge had made two errors.

The first was his rejection of Sony’s argument that the UK copyright legislation provided them with a defence against infringing any rights in the musicians’ performances as recorded on the three studio albums released by the Jimi Hendrix Experience. The defence essentially says that although the legislation gives rights to performers whose performances were recorded before the legislation came into force, there is no infringement by carrying out acts “in pursuance of arrangements made” before that date. The Court of Appeal rejected Sony’s argument that this defence was broad enough to cover any future acts, and held that the High Court Judge had been correct to find that the Claimants had a more than arguable case that the musicians’ original consent given in an agreement made in 1966 did not extend to the current exploitation of their performance rights by Sony.

The second error alleged was that the High Court Judge wrongly rejected Sony’s argument that the Claimants’ claims had been brought too late because they were effectively claims to a share of partnership assets (the Jimi Hendrix Experience having been a partnership between Jimi Hendrix and the other two musicians). Such claims have to be brought within 6 years of dissolution of the partnership. However, the Court of Appeal confirmed that the action was not a claim to a share of partnership assets, but a claim for infringement of copyright against Sony, a third party which was not one of the partners. As such, the action was not time-barred since the continued exploitation of the sound recordings would have amounted to ongoing copyright infringements. The action was therefore validly commenced within 6 years of the alleged copyright infringements having occurred, although the Claimants will not be able to claim for damages, or alternatively profit made by Sony, in respect of infringing acts committed more than 6 years prior to the commencement of the court proceedings.

The case will therefore proceed to a full trial, and the outcome will no doubt be watched with great interest by musicians from bands whose deals pre-dated the advent of the now ubiquitous streaming services.