Court upholds denial of Big Baby Tape's lawsuit against Warner Music subsidiary

MOSCOW, July 24 The Intellectual Property Court agreed with two lower courts, which refused to recover 185 million rubles from Warner LLC to musician Egor Rakitin (pseudonym Big Baby Tape). Music», the Russian branch of the American recording company Warner Music Group.
According to the information in the arbitration case file, on Wednesday the IP Court rejected Rakitin's cassation appeal against the Moscow Arbitration Court's decision made in December and the ruling of the Ninth Arbitration Court of Appeal made in March.

The plaintiff's representative in the first instance reported that the claim was filed to recover compensation for the violation of Rakitin's copyright on 37 musical works that the defendant had posted in his music catalog on the Apple iTunes service. According to him, the works were being used for commercial purposes, although the musician had not transferred the rights to them and had not received any compensation. The plaintiff explained that the amount of the claim was calculated based on compensation of 5 million rubles for each work.

The defendant stated that the rights to the phonograms were granted to him by individual entrepreneur Vadim Mats, who was brought into the case as a third party, who in turn has a license agreement with Rakitin. Mats' representative handed over the agreement with the musician to the court. The plaintiff's representative called the agreement invalid and asked to postpone the hearing to review the document, but the court rejected the motion, explaining that the agreement was signed by both parties and should be with the plaintiff.
The court of first instance, in rejecting the claim, indicated that it «was filed not in defense of exclusive rights to phonograms, which are the subject of related rights, but in defense of copyrights to musical works (the existence of which was not proven by the plaintiff).» As the court noted, from the contracts for recording and mixing musical works with OOO Sakura Family presented by Rakitin, «it is not possible to clearly identify the musical works, the rights to which belong to the plaintiff.»
The American Warner Music Group, along with Universal Music and Sony Music, is the «big three» recording companies, which account for up to 80% of the publication of musical works. In early 2022, all three companies announced the termination or suspension of their operations in Russia.