Legal Notice

The licensing of back catalogue presents particular problems. Litigation over the past years in several countries has already established the true ownership of many previously disputed catalogues containing the recordings of well-known artists. Some sub-licensees have been held liable for the payment of substantial damages although they acted in good faith but because they had acquired rights from companies who did not have the right to sub license those titles.

If you intend to license recordings, we urge you to make sure that the company offering the license has the right to deal in those particular recordings particularly if the recordings includes hit songs by well known artists or so called public domain recordings or you find that the licenser you are dealing with is not the original owner of the recordings. Just because something might be in the public domain in the USA does not mean it is in the public domain in the United Kingdom and/or Europe and in fact the opposite is often the truth.

Failure to make certain of who owns the copyright could result in your facing serious liability.

We give you this advice, as it were, as a public service and we urge all potential licensees for their own good, to ensure that if a supplier is not the original owner, that he does in fact own or control the rights you wish to acquire.

We, for our part, are satisfied as to the chain of title of everything contained in our vast catalogues, including many titles, which other people call public domain material but in fact is not. We also register most of our prime overseas releases in the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. and we own the copyright in that material.