Record companies were breathing a sigh of relief this week, after the news that a lawsuit about performers’ property rights to the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s albums was defeated in London’s High Court.
The case was focused on the deal Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell had signed in 1966. The relatives of the two musicians, who died in 2003 and 2008 respectively, were arguing that they were owed a slice of the performers' property rights relating to the three Experience albums – Are You Experienced?, Axis: Bold As Love and Electric Ladyland.
As with The Police royalties case earlier this year, this is another lawsuit where a fresh light is shone upon agreements that were signed decades before the advent of streaming, a revenue, ahem, stream that the three Experience members could not have conceived of when they first signed a record contract.
Sony – who these days has custody of the three albums – argued that back then the band signed away the rights to exploit the recordings "by any method now known or hereafter to be known". It also cited the fact that Redding and Mitchell both dropped similar lawsuits in the early 1970s.
Judge Edwin Johnson agreed and ruled in Sony's favour. He dismissed the relatives’ claim, saying in a written ruling that the deal Redding and Mitchell signed "was not limited to any particular methods for the delivery of music".
Had the Redding and Mitchell estates been successful, it would have opened up a slew of similar lawsuits from relatives of other dead musicians. For the music industry, it very much represents a bullet dodged.
