Derek Achong

The Copy­right Mu­sic Or­gan­i­sa­tion of T&T (COTT) has failed to suc­cess­ful­ly pros­e­cute its crim­i­nal copy­right in­fringe­ment com­plaint against a for­mer em­ploy­ee for al­leged­ly fail­ing to ob­tain a li­cence for a Car­ni­val fete in 2018. 

On Mon­day, Se­nior Mag­is­trate Nan­nette Forde-John dis­missed the nov­el com­plaint brought against Lyn­don Legall. 

Le­gal sources said that case was one of the first in which a ju­di­cial of­fi­cer weighed in on a crim­i­nal com­plaint filed un­der the Copy­right Act. 

The leg­is­la­tion makes it an of­fence to play copy­right­ed record­ings pub­licly with­out the per­mis­sion of the copy­right hold­er. 

The of­fence car­ries a max­i­mum penal­ty of a $250,000 fine and up to 10 years im­pris­on­ment, with re­peat of­fend­ers re­ceiv­ing in­creased penal­ties. 

COTT, which col­lects roy­al­ties on be­half of com­posers and per­form­ers through its li­cens­ing process, al­so brought the crim­i­nal com­plaint against Legall af­ter he host­ed his an­nu­al Strand­ed by the Pool fete in Saly­bia in Feb­ru­ary 2018.

COTT al­so pur­sued a civ­il law­suit against Legall in re­la­tion to the event and an­oth­er which was host­ed a year be­fore. The civ­il case went to tri­al in late 2021, with the par­ties still await­ing the judg­ment. 

Weigh­ing in on the crim­i­nal com­plaint on Mon­day, Forde-John ruled that the ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed by COTT's wit­ness­es was in­suf­fi­cient to prove the case against Legall, who was rep­re­sent­ed by Nigel Tran­cu­so and Lu­a­na Leza­ma. 

COTT was rep­re­sent­ed by Se­nior Coun­sel An­tho­ny Vieira and Lee Mer­ry.  

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, Legall, who stopped work­ing at COTT be­tween 2015 and 2016, said he was re­lieved by the out­come, which came al­most six years af­ter he was first im­pli­cat­ed. 

"Win­ning the copy­right in­fringe­ment case against COTT, feels like a tremen­dous weight has been lift­ed from my shoul­ders. The joy and re­lief I feel are al­most in­de­scrib­able," he said. 

Legall sug­gest­ed that it was a vic­to­ry for small busi­ness own­ers such as him. 

"This vic­to­ry is not just per­son­al; it's a bea­con of hope for any­one who has ever felt pow­er­less in the face of cor­po­rate gi­ants," he said. 

Legall re­vealed that he planned to es­tab­lish his own copy­right com­pa­ny to as­sist busi­ness­es and par­ty pro­mot­ers to bet­ter nav­i­gate copy­right law. 

"I want to en­sure that they feel pro­tect­ed and sup­port­ed in their cre­ative en­deav­ours, just as now feel lib­er­at­ed from the chains of my past strug­gles," he said.