Crosstown Music Co 1 LLC v Rive Droide Music Limited and others [2010] EWCA Civ1222
The agreements between the two songwriters and a music publisher under which copyright was assigned to a music publisher, also contained a clause which provided for a re-transfer of the copyrights to each of the writers in the event that material breaches of the original agreement were not remedied within 45 or 60 days (the period being different for each writer) after notice had been given. An audit several years later revealed failures by Rive Droite to account for royalties. Notice was given by the songwriters asserting that if the breaches were not remedied, copyright would revert to them. Crosstown (which had bought the rights from Rive Droite) argued that an assignment of copyright had to be for a fixed period to fall under section 90(2) of the CDPA, and so it was not possible to have a valid reversion of rights contingent on the occurrence of an uncertain future event, such as an unremedied breach of contract.
Section 90(2)(b) provides that an assignment or other transmission of copyright may be partial so as to apply "to part, but not the whole, of the period for which copyright is to subsist".
The Court of Appeal held that the clause was not an agreement to re-assign the copyright in the future. It was as an automatic reverter provision, so that the reversion took place on the fulfilment of the conditions and without the need for the execution of a re-assignment or other transfer to the writers. The court said that there was nothing in the wording of section 90(2)(b), any other Act or at common law that prevented automatic reversion at a future date that was not known at the date of the original assignment.
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