Copyright
Musical Works
Jane Lambert
Last updated 28 May 2005
These are works consisting of music exclusive of any words or action that are intended to be sung, spoken or performed with music (s.3 (1) Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988).
In Sawkins v Hyperion Records Ltd. [2005] EWCA Civ 565 (19 May 2005) the Court of Appeal upheld the trial judge's finding that musical copyright could subsist in the performing edition of a 17th and early 18th century composer's work even though not much new music was actually written and the editor had intended to approach as closely as possible the composer's original work. The Court's reasoning appears to have been that the musicologist's did produce a score that could readily be performed by modern musicians.
Like a literary and dramatic work, a musical work must be recorded in writing or otherwise for copyright to subsist and it must also be original.
