Sony still can’t get no relief in claim over Jimi Hendrix Experience recordings

Image from Copilot

As covered in a guest post by KatFriends Monica Thornell and Jonathan Coote last year [here], the estates of two bandmates of Jimi Hendrix (bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell) are suing Sony Music Entertainment UK Ltd (“Sony”) for infringement of their copyright and performers’ rights. Sony tried to dispute jurisdiction in early 2022, but that failed. Sony then applied to strike out the claim in September 2022, but the English High Court largely refused the application in February 2024. There are parallel legal complaints proceeding in New York, which are stayed pending the outcome of the English case.

Permission to appeal was granted on two grounds, which were that the judge should have accepted Sony’s arguments (1) that the performers’ rights claim was precluded by various legislation relating to those rights, and (2) that the claim was statute-barred as being a claim in respect of partnership assets. The Court of Appeal has dismissed Sony’s appeal against the refusal to strike out the claim, with Arnold LJ giving the leading judgment: Noel Redding Estate Ltd & Anor v Sony Music Entertainment UK Ltd [2025] EWCA Civ 66 (06 February 2025).

The claim is for infringement of copyright and performers’ rights (the latter under ss. 182A-182CA of the CDPA). It is the claim under s.182CA CDPA (making available right) that is of particular importance, given that streaming was not a known technology at the time the members of the Jimi Hendrix Experience consented to the recording of their music.

The core provision for the purposes of the appeal, however, was s.180(3) CDPA:

The Claimants’ case is that their performers’ rights were infringed by the reproduction, distribution, making available (etc.) of the recordings. Sony’s case is that its exploitation of those rights was done “in pursuance of arrangements made before” 1 August 1989, i.e. a recording agreement from 1966. The first instance judge held that a factual inquiry may be needed to assess whether the consents to their performances being recorded given in the recording contract covered the modern exploitation of those rights through streaming.

The Court of Appeal (with Arnold LJ giving the lead judgment) dismissed this ground of appeal. He held that the words “in pursuance of arrangements made before commencement” required that there needed to be some nexus between the person looking to benefit from the defence under s.180(3) and the arrangements in question. While the Claimants had consented to their performances being recorded, Sony was a “complete stranger” to those arrangements. Sony’s case would, if correct, “eviscerate” the rights conferred by Part II of the CDPA.

This aspect of the case was an interesting attempt to have the claim time-barred. The Claimants’ case is that Redding, Mitchell and Hendrix were a partnership and that the copyright in the recordings would have belonged to that partnership. That partnership dissolved automatically when Hendrix died in 1970, leaving Redding, Mitchell and Hendrix as joint owners. Even if the copyright and performers’ rights were assigned to the producers under the recording contract, when that agreement lapsed in 1972 the copyright would have reverted back to the band members (or, in the case of Hendrix, his estate).

Sony’s position was that the claim was in effect one for a share of partnership assets (the copyright and performers’ rights). Section 23 of the Limitation Act 1980 provides that any claim for “an account” needs to be brought within 6 years, and therefore expired decades ago. 

Arnold LJ held that while the Claimants were seeking ‘an account’, they were doing so as the remedy for copyright infringement, not as against another partner in the dissolved partnership.

Sony has not lost the case; the case will now (unless permission to appeal to the Supreme Court is granted) go towards trial, which this Kat understands will be in December 2025. The court will then have to determine the extent of the consent given by the Claimants under the recording contract, and decide who owns the copyright and performers’ rights in the recordings.