Court of Appeal upholds strike-out of Blur drummer’s CPO claim

29/06/26

The Court of Appeal has today upheld a decision of the Competition Appeal Tribunal to strike out claims sought to be brought in collective proceedings by David Rowntree – the drummer from Blur. 

Mr Rowntree had sought to represent songwriter members of the Performing Right Society, which is a body which collects and distributes royalties relating to the public performance of musical works in respect of which it has been assigned the “performing rights”. PRS has both songwriter and publisher members. When PRS collects royalties, it is sometimes unable to distribute them to members in accordance with its usual rules owing to data problems which prevent proper “matching” (for example, it may not be clear to which work a royalty payment relates). 

Mr Rowntree described such royalties as “Black Box” royalties and sought to bring collective proceedings on behalf of PRS’s songwriter members arguing that PRS’s approach to the distribution of “Black Box” royalties unfairly favoured publisher members over songwriter members. In particular, for the purposes of the CPO application, it was accepted that PRS typically pays these so-called “Black Box” royalties on a pro rata basis to all members in the same proportion as they receive matched royalties. Mr Rowntree alleged that this pro rata distribution unfairly favoured publishers over songwriters and thus amounted to the imposition of unfair trading conditions contrary to s.18(2)(a) of the Competition Act 1998, in short because he claimed that songwriters are more likely than publishers to have data problems. 

At first instance, the Tribunal struck out and granted reverse summary judgment on the claim on the basis that the claim form failed to disclose an arguable abuse and also on the basis that the class as identified by Mr Rowntree was not drawn so as to capture members with individual claims under competition law. The Tribunal also held that the Microsoft and cost-benefit tests were not satisfied. A central problem with the claim was that Mr Rowntree and his instructed expert had failed to identify a clear counterfactual against which the fairness of PRS’s current policy could be assessed. 

The Court of Appeal (Miles LJ delivering the judgment, handed down within three weeks of the hearing) upheld the Tribunal’s decision to strike out/grant reverse summary judgment. The absence of a specified counterfactual was fatal to the claim; the mere identification of a potential statistical difference between songwriters and publishers could not, even if proved at trial, on its own demonstrate the presence of unfair treatment (including because Mr Rowntree was not alleging a claim of discrimination under s.18(2)(c) of the Act). The class itself was not monolithic (different songwriters might be affected in different ways by a change in policy). There was no criticism about the efforts made by PRS to resolve data problems. Further, PRS had to take some decision about how to distribute the affected sums, and did so via its Distribution Committee which included representation from both publisher and songwriter members. 

Given the Court’s conclusion, it was not necessary to consider the aspects of the appeal concerned with the scope of the class definition and the effect of the Supreme Court’s judgment in Evans. 

The judgment is here.