Kwik-Fit Faces £200,000 Claim for Playing Radio

Kwik-Fit has been before the Court of Session in Edinburgh, where the UK’s largest independent tyre retail chains faces a claim of £200,000 in damages from the Performing Rights Society (PRS). PRS is suing the company because it objects to the volume at which mechanics play the radio while working. PRS say that Kwik-Fit’s technicians have been playing music loudly enough to be heard by colleagues and customers, thus constituting a “performance” and therefore royalties payments. Presiding Judge Lord Emslie refused to dismiss the action, but also said he should not be taken as accepting that the PRS would necessarily succeed in their claims.

For its part Kwik-Fit said that it will fight the case and operates a no-radio policy at its branches. However, PRS reportedly has evidence that music has been played at Kwik-Fit on 250 occasions in and after 2005.

“The key point to note, it was said, was that the findings on each occasion were the same, with music audibly ‘blaring’ from employee’s radios in such circumstances that the defenders’ local and central management could not have failed to be aware of what was going on,” the BBC quoted Lord Emslie as saying. “The allegations are of a widespread and consistent picture emerging over many years whereby routine copyright infringement in the workplace was, or inferentially must have been, known to and ‘authorised’ or ‘permitted’ by local and central management,” he added.

The PRS claims that around half of Kwik-Fit’s 670 UK outlets playing music requiring a licence. It says that the company owes it around £30,000 per year in licence fees, dating back to 2007.

Kwik-Fit said in hearings earlier this year that it had carried out a health and safety audit which found that music was played in its garages in contravention of its policy, but that it did not accept that it could be heard by the public or constituted a ‘performance’.

“If copyright music is played in public – in shops, restaurants, workplaces or any other business, then a PRS license is required. 1,000s of such businesses throughout the UK have participated in this agreement since 1914 and understand the need for it…Kwik Fit has been given every opportunity to take out the appropriate licences but they have refused. Court action is regrettable but Kwik Fit’s actions have left us with no choice,” PRS said in an official statement.