Proving a claim can be more difficult that it seems
DISPUTE OVER RECORDING PRODUCER RIGHTS TURNS OUT TO BE MORE COMPLICATED THAN THE PLAINTIFF EXPECTED.
A case for infringement of producer rights was brought before the Sofia City Court by the Bulgarian National Radio.
BNR claimed that a company distributed a music compilation in violation of BNRs rights as a producer of some of the recordings in it. The company itself called in Vitality Music, represented by Vasil Pavlov from Pavlov & Co, as this was the company which provided the music for the compilation, according to a contract between the two latter parties.
The exhausting battle in court came down to proving whether the recordings used in the compilation were produced by BNR, or by Balkanton (the only existing between 50es and 90es and (then) state-owned recording company in Bulgaria), from which Vitality Music has acquired them. While it seems to be a fairly straightforward question, in fact everything turned out to be far more complicated since the actual recordings were made about 50 years ago, under a completely different regime in the country, when everything was government-owned, including BNR and the music producer in question. Thus, BNR and the producer often worked together, using each-others studios and artists and thus making it quite complicated to identify the specific producer of each recording. Original recordings were found in both companies’ archives.
This is where the key role of Vasil Pavlov came – making sure that the complicated situation did not confuse the court and helping the case with adequate questions towards the experts and key questionings of various witnesses in order to show that differentiating between the recordings and which company actually produced them was virtually impossible, given the complicated legal reality in which these events took place.
The case finally concluded with a settlement between BNR and the defendant that left Vitality Music off the hook, ensuring no claims against the company could be raised in the future.