GREENSLEEVES WINS COPYRIGHT CASE

Added : ( Fri May 06 2005 )

Press Release 5 May 2005

GREENSLEEVES WINS COPYRIGHT CASE

Greensleeves Records Limited, specialists in Jamaican music, has successfully defended claims of copyright infringement in a six day jury trial held in the US Federal Court. The jury in a unanimous verdict on April 20, 2005 dismissed the claims of mixing engineer Hopeton Overton Browne, known as Scientist.

The case was heard in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, located in Manhattan. US District Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum presided over the trial.

The recordings at issue were five tracks from the album "Scientist Rids the World of the Evil Curse of the Vampires", a reggae dub album originally released by Greensleeves in 1981. Browne claimed to have rights of ownership in both the recording and composition copyrights in the tracks. The claim for copyright infringement was brought by Browne after Greensleeves licensed the tracks in 2002 to Rockstar Games/Take Two Interactive for use in the video game "Grand Theft Auto III".

The jury was unanimous in its finding that Browne was not the owner of either the recording copyrights or the composition copyrights.

The recordings had been produced by Henry "Junjo" Lawes, one of the most prolific Jamaican producers of the early dancehall era in the early eighties, and had been licensed by Lawes to Greensleeves. Both Henry Lawes and King Tubby, at whose studio the recordings were mixed, are no longer alive and so could not refute Scientist's claims.

King Jammy, the renowned Jamaican producer and sound engineer, who had been a Director of King Tubby's Studio at the time the recordings were mixed, testified on behalf of Greensleeves.

Greensleeves' A&R director, Chris Cracknell, who had visited King Tubby's Studio in Kingston, Jamaica in 1982 and met both King Tubby and Scientist at the time, and Greensleeves' managing director Chris Sedgwick, also testified at the trial.

Although Greensleeves' profits on the video game licenses with Rockstar were small, Greensleeves felt it was important to defend itself in court against Browne's claims, and it feels vindicated by its strong stand to protect the copyrights it controls.

Greensleeves was represented by Louis S Ederer, a partner at the law firm Torys LLP in New York. Mr Ederer was assisted by a Torys associate, John Maltbie.

"Basically, Scientist was claiming to own copyrights in songs and recordings as a result of being the mixing engineer. Although we always felt these claims were ridiculous, we had to defend ourselves all the way to trial and are delighted to have got the right result" said Chris Sedgwick.

The album "Scientist Rids The World of the Evil Curse of the Vampires" is available as part of Greensleeves Reggae Classics series.

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