Creative Lawyers for Creative Business


Jonathan King gets a substantial amount by looking in the Mirror

Music impresario and convicted paedophile Jonathan King has been the subject of much colourful editorial from the British tabloid press. However, while serving his sentence, Mr King was given a reason to be grateful to the tabloids - money. It would appear in this sense 'crime did pay'.

Before his conviction, Mr King was a key player in the music industry. A whole raft of bands including Genesis and 10CC were discovered by King in the 60s, 70s and 80s. The fad of newspapers giving away free CDs, largely containing soft rock from those eras, gave Mr King an opportunity to cash in.

The Mirror gave away a CD containing, amongst other songs, a track called "Rubber Bullets" by 10CC. The copyright in that song was owned by none other than Jonathan King and, yes you've guessed it, with him locked up the Mirror just used the track without his permission. Gotcha!

However, when it came to compensation for the copyright infringement the Mirror Group argued that it had just been a free CD distributed with the newspaper, therefore, they had not really made a profit out of it. They offered Mr King £40,000. Mr King argued that the CD had not been free at all: it was the paper that had been free. On that basis the CDs had in fact been sold for the paper's price of 30p - not a lot but multiplied by the Mirror's 3,000,000 circulation and you get a healthy £900,000 turnover. A clever twist and legally acceptable. The dispute concluded with the Mirror agreeing to pay King 'a very substantial amount'.

And the ka-ch-king did not stop there! While Mr King had also been serving his time, another of his copyright works "It's a Good News Week" by the Hedgehoppers Anonymous had been used as the theme for the ITV series "Dead Man Weds".

Legal Comment:
While there are rules about convicts becoming unjustly enriched by selling their story, there is nothing to stop them remaining involved in their original legitimate businesses, except perhaps for the obvious spatial restrictions. Whatever you think about Mr King's musical productions, he has only one criminal record. The money (to be) paid to Mr King by the Mirror Group and ITV was unrelated to his conviction so there is no reason why it should not be paid to him.

The lesson to be learned is that when using works protected by copyright including music and artworks, care needs to be taken to find and get the approval of the copyright owner. If steps are not taken, you could end up in a similar position to the Mirror. As Mr King was in prison when the edition of the Mirror containing the CD was published, he had plenty of time on his hands to ensure that he was paid.