A UK judicial tribunal has rejected a proposed class action lawsuit against performance rights organization PRS for Music over how it distributes “black box” royalties, i.e., royalties owed on songs whose rightsholders haven’t been properly identified.
In a judgment issued on Wednesday (August 27), the Competition Appeal Tribunal dismissed the proposed class-action lawsuit that had been brought on behalf of PRS’ 165,000 songwriter members by Blur drummer Dave Rowntree.
It concluded that because songwriters are not “owed” black box royalties, the class doesn’t have a legitimate claim under UK law. It also concluded that Rowntree’s lawyers hadn’t proposed an alternative to PRS’ method of distributing black box royalties, and doubted that the “cost-benefit” ratio of the lawsuit made sense, given that PRS is a not-for-profit owned by its publisher and songwriter members.
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