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Law firm Adams & Adams has long been the protector and champion of creative rights in South Africa.   Danie Strachan and Nishan Singh, partners and experts in entertainment law at the law firm, say the time has come for musicians and record labels to get to grips with the fundamental legal issues which will ultimately determine their success and the South African music industry’s growth in the future.

Administrative penalties have come under the spotlight, yet again, in the wake of the highly publicized case that came before the Competition Tribunal (“Tribunal”) as Competition Commission v Telkom.

In terms of the new Companies Act (“Act”), all state owned and listed companies as well as any other company that has a public interest score of above 500 points must appoint a Social and Ethics Committee.  A company’s public interest score is calculated as the sum of the following:

On 23 April 2012, the Supreme Court of Zambia, the highest court of appeal in that country, handed down a rather perplexing and worrisome decision.  That decision alters, quite significantly, the understanding of the rights associated with unregistered marks in Zambia.

Guy Hobbs, a photographer from Cape Town, has recently filed court proceedings based on copyright infringement in a US District Court against Sir Elton John, Bernie Taupin (Sir Elton’s song writing partner and lyricist) and their company Big Pig Music.

Santam has recently been a favourite for being on the receiving end of advertisement spoofs. First DialDirect made an advertisement which appears to have copied Santam’s advertisement featuring Sir Ben Kingsley in a suit walking on the beach, and now Nando’s has struck.

The 18^th annual MTN South African Music Awards was held at Sun City on 29 and 30 April 2012. The new CEO, Randall Abrahams, and his team put together a world class awards ceremony, which has been tweeted to be the best MTN SAMA ever held!

On 25 June 2002, the Copyright Act and the Performers’ Protection Act were amended to introduce needle-time rights.  The term “needle-time rights” refers to the right of an owner of a sound recording (embodying a musical work) and the performer of the musical work, to receive a royalty in respect of the broadcast, or performance, of that sound recording. 

The term “cyber-squatting”, which means registering or using a domain name in bad faith with the intent to profit from the goodwill in another’s trade mark, has gained significant exposure in the last decade with the exponential growth of the Internet and the concomitant increase in user traffic.  Fortunately, there is a quick, efficient and reasonably cost effective mechanism with which to combat cyber-squatting in certain name spaces, being the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP).

Chico Hamilton once said, “A lot of musicians aren't proud; they'll do other work, just to be able to play music. I guess that's the way it's always going to be - musicians will have to suffer to a certain degree in order to obtain their outlet”.

The South African Supreme Court of Appeal has handed down an important judgement for pharma trade marks. The case of Adcock Ingram v Cipla Medpro reconsidered the notion that pharmaceuticals sold on prescription are less likely to be confused because they are dispensed by trained professionals in regulated circumstances. In doing so the Court questioned the relevance of findings in a 1983 leading case, also involving Adcock, in contemporary society.