Harbottle & Lewis successfully defends The Sunday Times in the High Court

A claim to $18million in damages made by the estate of Jimi Hendrix against the newspaper has been rejected by the English High Court in its 111-page written judgment.

The claim arose from a CD covermount of Jimi Hendrix music that was given away free with copies of The Sunday Times in September 2006. Having established that it owned the copyright in the songs, the estate argued that the distribution of the covermount compromised a forthcoming release of Jimi Hendrix material. But the judge, Sir William Blackburne, only awarded the estate approximately 2% of its damages claim stating that this amount was "very substantially less than the millions that they were claiming".

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30/07/10

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