The Performing Right Society in Britain and its counterpart here, the Composers and Authors Society of Singapore (Compass) have accused American cinema chain United Artists of not paying licence fees for the music and songs from the movies Titanic and Jerry Maguire screened in its theatres in 1997 and 1998. The songs and music were apparently arranged and composed by members of the Performing Right Society in Britain whose copyright United Artists has been accused of infringing.
It was revealed that despite repeated reminders asking United Artists to obtain a licence for publicly screening the copyrighted works of music, the cinema chain refused to do so thus leading up to the current legal action.
The societies claim that it is necessary for cinema chains to obtain a licence to perform copyrighted works of music in films that are screened in public. As such United Artists would have had to pay 0.2 per cent of the ticket sales for each of the films screened as licence fees.
The two copyright societies are claiming an unstipulated sum of money from or a percentage of the profits made by United Artists from screening the two movies here.
United Artists' lawyer argued that there was no need for his client to obtain a licence for performance of music which is part of the film. Further he claimed that the societies had no ownership over the sound recordings or music that comprise the soundtrack of the films.
The societies' lawyer claimed that screening the movies amounted to public performance of the music albeit the music had been in the soundtrack and that the societies were not claiming ownership of the sound recordings but rather the performing rights of such musical works.
The hearing of the matter continues in the High Court.
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