Legal News

Pink Floyd win court battle against EMI over online sales

By (Breaking Legal News)

The surviving members of Pink Floyd have won their court case against record label EMI. As reported in Spinner, the prog supergroup where forced to take EMI to court over a dispute relating to download royalties and whether the label had the right or not to sell Pink Floyd's catalogue online as individual tracks and not complete albums.

In a landmark ruling, the court found in favour of Pink Floyd and ordered EMI to pay £40,000 ($60,000) in costs. The judge has yet to rule how much the beleaguered label is to pay in fines. In a further ruling, EMI has also been banned from selling Pink Floyd's music online.

The case came to court over a dispute about a clause in Pink Floyd's 1999 contract. Signed five years before the advent of legal downloads, EMI argued that clause allowed them to sell the band's music in any way that it saw fit. Pink Floyd's argument rested on the assertion that the clause -- "there are no rights to sell any or all of the records as single records other than with permission" -- included digital as well as physical formats.

Full post as published by Breaking Legal News on March 11, 2010 (boomark / email).