Who are we? 

Cyclone Events Limited (“Cyclone”), which is a family-run events company and the Stiwt Arts Trust (“Stiwt”), which runs a 490-seater Stiwt community arts theatre in Rhosllannerchrugog, in the northern Welsh county of Wrexham.

Cyclone, Stiwt and their respective directors were faced with High Court proceedings, brought by entertainment giants, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, and their music publishing arms, TCF Music Publishing Inc and Fox Film Music Corporation (‘Fox’) after Cyclone performed its own version of Fox’s “The Greatest Showman” at the Stiwt theatre last summer in July 2018. 

Fox not only issued a claim against Cyclone and Stiwt, but also their individual directors, which resulted in grave concerns for the individuals, as they would be personally liable. This caused all the defendants much distress over the course of a year, as any personal assets would be on the line.

As a result of the proceedings, Cyclone Events Ltd went under. Cyclone was a family business run by Stewart Bassett and his 25-year-old son, Sam Foulkes.

The total ticket sales for the production amounted to around £40,000.  Despite this, Fox, represented by Wiggins LLP proceeded to issue a High Court claim citing that the claim was worth “in excess of £200,000”.

Our Case

Virtuoso Legal IP Protect team who represent Cyclone, Stiwt and their respective directors immediately upon receipt of the proceedings back in August 2018 invited Fox to transfer the proceedings from the High Court to the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court (“IPEC”).  Fox’s legal representatives refused and forced the parties into an expensive hearing on 25 January 2019. By this point, Fox had incurred over £90,000 in legal fees and forced Cyclone and Stiwt into incurring around £40,000. 

Prior to and during the hearing before Master Clark on 25 January 2019, Fox had made their agreement to transfer these proceedings to IPEC conditional on (1) lifting of the IPEC £500,000 damages cap and (2) payment of Fox’s legal costs by Cyclone and Stiwt.  Both conditions were rejected by the court and Master Clark agreed with Nick Zweck of Hogarth Chambers, Virtuoso Legal’s instructed counsel, that the appropriate court for these proceedings was the IPEC and that Fox ought to pay Cyclone and Stiwt’s legal costs of the application.

On 14 February 2019, Twentieth Century Fox sought to appeal the decision, on the basis that Master Clark had “adopted the wrong approach to the question of the damages cap in IPEC” and that the “The Master’s decision was irrational”.

On 22 March 2019, Mr Justice Birss, refused the Twentieth Century Fox application for permission to appeal because the “appeal is wholly without merit” and that his decision “is final and is not subject to review or appeal”. Mr Justice Birss then set out in full his reasons for refusing the appeal. 

In May 2019, shortly after Fox’s failure to resist transfer to the IPEC and despite maintaining that the damages in this claim would exceed £500,000, Fox served its “Points of Claim” (which set out how much damages they are claiming) which added up to a maximum of £72,821.91 plus interest. Given the numbers, this was quite the climb down by Fox. 

While this was a world away from Fox’s earlier estimates as to the value of their damages claim, it was still wholly unjustifiable, and the Defendants’ Points of Defence estimated a true damages value of around £8,778.50, which was very close to the repeated valuation the IP experts at Virtuoso Legal had stated from the outset.

Once Fox had started to become (a little) more realistic about the value of its damages claim, the parties were able to settle the proceedings in July 2019.

The Defendants agreed to pay Fox the sum of £15,000 in damages, in other words less than 0.03% of the amounts Fox were (at one point) claiming against the Defendants. If only Fox had correctly valued their own claim and engaged with negotiations from the outset, the costs of these proceedings could have been avoided.

Despite incurring significant costs themselves, the Defendants offered to pay £10,000 towards the Claimants’ costs in order to bring this matter to a conclusion. Given Fox’s estimated legal costs on this matter were in excess of £100,000, this is a “drop in the ocean” of the costs incurred by Fox by their own conduct.

As a results-based law firm, the IP experts at Virtuoso Legal would not be able to look our clients in the eye if we had obtained such a result for one of them.

We need your help

Given the financial position of the defendants in this case, they have set up a CrowdJustice page in order to assist with them with the paying of their legal costs. We ask you to please support us and assist. 

Philip Partington, director of Virtuoso Legal and head of its disputes department and London Office said:

“These proceedings have been deeply regretful to witness over the last year. The Defendants clearly made an early set of mistakes in the showing of their version of the Greatest Showman. However, in my view, they were simply naïve in their desire to put on a local theatre production for predominately children, rather than some sort of criminal master mind infringement operation. Unfortunately, Fox did not see the case this way and embarked on a wholly disproportionate set of proceedings. If Fox had been more reasonable at the outset, these proceedings could have settled within a month, rather than dragging on for almost a year, and in the process risk the closure of a local community theatre and costing Fox well over £100,000. We would hope they (and other similar rights holders) would re-consider this sort of disproportionate approach in the future. If other local theatres find themselves being bullied by large corporations, I trust they will pick up the telephone and give our team a call.”

Thank you for your support and time.