Legal Question in Entertainment Law in United Kingdom
Copyright Issues
Copyright issues, this is a fictional situation.what could hank do in the situation described.
Hank the Shank is an American Country and Western music star. He is known for travelling everywhere with his acoustic guitar and often composes impromptu musical tributes to his geographical locations around the world. Whilst on tour in the UK he �performs� �A Ballad to Heathrow� a completely original song with original lyrics in the passenger lounge of Heathrow Airport.
Alan a country and western fan records the whole song on his mp3 player/recorder while watching the performance at the airport.
Alan lends the music file to his friend Bill, who is also a country and Western enthusiast, and a big fan of Hank. Bill copies the file for his own use and places a copy on his Hank fansite on the world wide web, which to his surprise after 2 days there have been 10000 downloads of the song.
A week later while searching the internet Hank�s manager in the USA discovers the previously unknown Hank song and he informs Hank who is outraged by the discovery as his permission had not been sought for the recording of the original song at Heathrow or worse still the distribution of it on the internet.
1 Answer from Attorneys
Re: Copyright Issues
Apart from telling himself very strongly that he should not issue new Compositions in Public without first recording it and writing the lyrics down he should ask that the Song be pulled and/or an account of profits so that the amount of damages can be determined. In England the music will only have come into copyright because Alan Recorded it but Hank can still sue Alan for Copyright infringement in the England assuming he is a US Citizen.
The jurisdictional point about them being in the Lounge is a red herring. Wherever Hank and Alan where for immigration/customs purposes for copyright purposes they were in the London Borough of Hillingdon. Hank needs also to keep an eye to left field as Level 42 recorded a number called "Heathrow" in the eighties.
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