Sony Defeats UK Suit Over Performers’ Rights for Classic Hendrix Albums

Sony Music Entertainment on Tuesday defeated a London lawsuit claiming performers’ property rights in relation to Jimi Hendrix’s classic 1960s albums, which the label had warned could have caused chaos for the music industry.

London’s High Court ruled guitarist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell effectively signed over their rights to The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s albums and rejected the claimants’ arguments that streaming was not covered by a 1966 deal.

Sony had argued at last year’s trial that the case could have prompted a slew of lawsuits from session musicians and backing vocalists laying claim to lucrative streaming royalties had the claimants been successful.

Sony and lawyers representing the claimants, two companies to which Redding and Mitchell’s purported rights were assigned, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The lawsuit concerned The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s three studio albums “Are You Experienced,” “Axis: Bold As Love” and “Electric Ladyland,” released in 1967 and 1968.

The recordings helped usher in the psychedelic music age and made Hendrix a rock superstar before his death in London in September 1970, aged 27.

The descendants of Redding and Mitchell, who died in 2003 and 2008 respectively, had assigned any rights they might have had to two companies which sued Sony in 2022.

They sought a declaration that they owned a share of the sound recording copyrights of, and performers’ property rights in, the three Jimi Hendrix Experience albums.

Sony’s lawyers argued that in 1966 the band signed away the rights to exploit the recordings “by any method now known or hereafter to be known.” They also cited releases agreed by Redding and Mitchell to drop lawsuits in the early 1970s.

Judge Edwin Johnson ruled in Sony’s favor and dismissed the lawsuit, saying in a written ruling that the deal Redding and Mitchell signed “was not limited to any particular methods for the delivery of music.”

(Reporting by Tobin; Editing by Alison Williams)