[2025] EWHC 39 (IPEC)

Mr Rinkoff has worked in the comedy industry for over 20 years as a stand-up comedian, director, writer and promoter. He explained that he has promoted live comedy acts since around 2006, initially in conjunction with his comedy magazine ‘The Fix.’ After the magazine stopped trading in 2012, he rebranded his regular live nights "Shambles." Shambles ran at the Aces and Eights Club, a pub or bar in Tufnell Park in north London which hosts a variety of live music and comedy performances in its basement. At about the same time, Mr Rinkoff said, he launched a YouTube channel called "Raybot."

In about 2013, Mr Rinkoff decided to create what he described as a digital version of Shambles. He said that he intended to showcase stand-up comedy in an innovative way, combining scenes of live comedy with behind-the-scenes narrative in the form of a sitcom, the intended effect being to immerse the audience in the setting of the live comedy club. With the help of a small team he filmed a series of 6 shows which were made available to the public and are still available in the UK on the Raybot YouTube channel. He had overall directorial control over the style and content of the shows, which I discuss below.

In September 2014, Mr Rinkoff entered into a production agreement with Wildseed Productions Ltd, which financed and produced a further series of 6 shows, released on Wildseed’s YouTube channel in 2015. Those shows were taken down in April 2022.

The Defendant, Baby Cow Productions Ltd, is a TV production company. It produced a series of 5 shows entitled Live at the Moth Club. They were broadcast on the TV channel Dave (owned by UKTV) in December 2022 to January 2023 and were later made available for streaming on UKTV Play.

The moving force behind LATMC was Rupert Majendie (“Mr Majendie”) who is Head of Development at the Defendant company and who has also had a lengthy career in comedy. He too has run live comedy gigs at various venues, including since 2015 at the Moth Club, which is a working men's club in Hackney, where he runs an alternative comedy night called Knock2Bag. Mr Rinkoff and Mr Majendie have known each other for years. They were friendly at one stage but fell out after an incident in 2012 when Mr Rinkoff staged a protest during a show promoted by Mr Majendie at the Edinburgh Festival. There appears to have been something of a rapprochement in about 2021.

Mr Rinkoff became aware of LATMC shortly before its release. I am not clear how much he knew about it, it is possible that he had seen a trailer for it, but he did not say. His immediate reaction was to think that it had been copied from Shambles, and on 4 November 2022 (before LATMC was first broadcast) he posted a message of complaint on Facebook, referring to having instructed copyright lawyers and claiming that LATMC was “… a corporate version of Shambles for the masses …”. His solicitors wrote a letter of claim to the Defendant dated 23 December 2022 alleging infringement of copyright.They identified the principal similarity between Shambles and LATMC as the combination of “a narrative sitcom with a live stand-up show case” but it was also alleged that there were similarities of features of the characters and plotlines. They accepted that no single one of the features present in both shows would give rise to a claim, but said that the number of similarities plus the fact that “the creator” of LATMC was “clearly familiar” with Shambles led to an inescapable conclusion of copying. The Defendant disputed the claim, and these proceedings followed, with the claim being issued on 31 May 2023.

It is Mr Rinkoff’s pleaded case that the format of the two series of Shambles is protected as a dramatic work for the purposes of the Copyright Designs and Patent Act 1988 (‘the Act’) and the Defendant infringed his copyright by copying and by communicating LATMC to the public. The Amended Particulars of Claim filed in February 2024 identified a single work in which copyright was claimed as having the following features:

“8 … the format of Shambles consists of a number of clearly identifiable features, which, taken together, distinguish it from other shows of a similar type. Those features are connected together in a coherent framework which can be repeatedly applied so as to enable the show to be reproduced in recognisable form. In support of the foregoing, the Claimant relies on the unique combination of each of the following features, giving rise to a series with an idiosyncratic tone and/or distinctive plots not seen in other sitcoms:

8.1.

A setting in a comedy club struggling to make ends meet based in a real-world venue which is not a full-time purpose built comedy club;

8.2.

The blending of fictional scenes involving situation comedy, on the one hand, and actual stand-up performances by both up-and-coming acts and established names filmed in front of a real audience at the club, on the other, giving rise to a unique hybrid of sitcom and comedy entertainment;

8.3.

The staging of interactions between the fictional characters of the sitcom scenes and inter alia the stand-up comedians of the live performance scenes to create a unique blend of the fictional and the documentary, including interactions between the fictional characters and the stand-up comedians, and/or interactions between the fictional characters and real audience members, …;

8.4

The use of techniques of cinema verité techniques including handheld camera footage, the use of natural lighting, the use of dialogue that appears to be unscripted and improvised, the staging of scenes in a fly-on-the-wall manner in which action unfolds in front of the camera in a manner that appears un-staged and natural, and the use of what appears to be a real-life audience at a real comedy venue to imbue all the scenes with a sense of realism and authenticity but also to add to the general dry and deadpan humour of the series;

8.5.

A promoter character, Harry, who is the protagonist of the show and faces significant challenges in putting on a successful comedy night, …;

8.6

A hapless club owner character, Greg, who owns and runs the dilapidated venue and who tries to help the protagonist but usually makes things worse, …;

8.7.

An intern character and junior member of the team running the comedy club (named Joe in the First Season and Toby in the Second Season), who likewise acts with good intentions but often just makes things worse for the protagonist, …;

8.8

The constant presence of a variety of industry characters working behind the scenes in the comedy industry, including such as agents, producers and talent scouts, who come up with bad or surreal ideas for the comedy night that never work, ...”

In paragraph 9 of the Amended Particulars of Claim, it is alleged that the work was recorded not just in the video recordings of the Shambles shows, but also in a number of documents written by Mr Rinkoff, such as notes of key features of Series 1, plot points for Series 1, outline scripts for Series 2 and a Shambles ‘Philosophy’ written in around November 2014.

One peculiarity of the Claimant’s case is that it was not made clear when he alleges that the work was completed. The Claimant’s skeleton argument for the trial suggested that the underlying format of both series was the same, which might have suggested that the format was set by the end of series 1. However, both the Amended Particulars of Claim and a Response to a Part 18 Request provided by the Claimant in August 2023 imply that the copyright work identified in paragraph 8 of the Amended Particulars of Claim is a single work, which includes elements from both series of Shambles. In addition, Mr Rinkoff confirmed in the same Response that he was alleging only infringement of the format as a dramatic work, and not alleging an infringement of copyright by copying or paraphrasing the dialogue of Shambles.

In the Amended Particulars of Claim Mr Rinkoff identified features of LATMC which he alleged gave rise “to a sitcom with a markedly similar tone and feeling to the original Shambles.” He alleged that there are striking similarities between the shows which could not be explained by coincidence and inferred that this was because Mr Majendie had accessed and copied Shambles. Following the case management conference on 8 March 2024, Schedules were produced in which Mr Rinkoff identified a limited number of scenes from Shambles said to support the points from paragraph 8 which I have set out above, and the pleaded similarities of feature and plot in LATMC.

The Defendant denied that the format relied upon by Mr Rinkoff was protectable as a dramatic work, because it was not designed to be performed, nor capable of being performed, but also denied that the two series of Shambles had a format identifiable with sufficient precision and objectivity to be capable of being protected as a copyright work. Copying was, in any event, also denied.

As is usual in this Court, a list of issues to be decided at the trial of liability was set out in the CMC Order of 8 March 2024; it was amended by Order of 31 July 2024. The issues were: