SINGAPORE: The Composers and Authors Society of Singapore (COMPASS), a licensing body that protects the rights of music writers, has mounted an uncommon private prosecution against Slim Entertainment, a firm that owns a karaoke lounge called Catwalk.
Catwalk, located in the Textile Centre at Jalan Sultan, runs a nightclub and karaoke lounge, among its services.
COMPASS opened its case on Wednesday (Oct 22), showing that the KTV lounge had been playing music from its repertoire including works of Jay Chou and JJ Lin without the required licences in breach of the Copyright Act.
When Slim Entertainment failed to respond to numerous letters from COMPASS, two of its licensing executives booked a room at Catwalk and sang songs in order to record evidence.
After a short hearing where the defendant did not show up, the judge convicted Slim Entertainment of all 20 charges under the Copyright Act raised by the complainant COMPASS, which is a non-profit organisation.
The charges relate to 10 songs, with 10 of the charges relating to the musical or composition part of the works, and the other 10 relating to the lyrics.Ā
In their opening statement, solicitors from Coleman Street Chambers said COMPASS is a non-profit collective management organisation in Singapore regulated by the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore.
COMPASS collectively manages and licenses around 19.5 million musical works and their associated literary works in its repertoire on behalf of music creators, namely authors, composers and publishers, said the lawyers.
