Where media disputes come from
Media and entertainment runs on rights: who created a work, who owns it, who may exploit it and on what terms. When that breaks down, the dispute is usually one of two kinds. The first is a question of ownership and permission, the territory of copyright and licensing. The second is a question of money: whether royalties were accounted for and paid correctly. The two often appear together, and both reward a witness who knows how the industry actually operates.
Copyright, ownership and licensing
Copyright and licensing disputes turn on authorship and chain of title, the scope of a licence, and whether infringement involved substantial copying. In the UK these questions sit against the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, with the Intellectual Property Office the relevant authority for registered rights. An expert can trace how a work was made and cleared, and explain creative and technical similarity to a court that does not live in the industry.
Royalties, rights valuation and streaming
Royalty accounting disputes hinge on the numbers behind a deal: whether statements are complete, whether recoupment was calculated correctly and what is owed. Forensic examination of royalty statements is specialist work. The rise of streaming and digital distribution has made it harder still, because value now flows through platform models and usage data that bear little resemblance to the old wholesale economics. Where a dispute concerns the worth of a catalogue or a right, valuation expertise ties the two strands together.
Production costs, reputation and instructing
Other instructions concern production budgets and cost overruns in film and television, or defamation and privacy, where the question is increasingly how content spread and what harm followed. Whatever the matter, the expert's duty is to the court under CPR Part 35, not to the party paying. Our guide on how to instruct an expert witness sets out what to expect.