[2025] EWHC 1954 (IPEC)

At War with Satan

The last of the works in which Mr Lant claims copyright is a design for part of the cover of the band’s third album, At War with Satan, released by Neat Records in 1983. It is, as he accepted, a simple design, of the album name in a standard gothic style of font (a font already used on some of the band’s other recordings) over quite a simple upturned cross shape. Despite its simplicity, the Defendants did not suggest that the work was not capable of being protected as a copyright work, nor did they suggest that the work was only part of the original album cover design.

The album was originally going to be called The Book of Armageddon. Mr Lant says that he sketched the album sleeve and showed it to Neat Records together with leather samples as he wanted the sleeve to look like a leather-bound book. Mr Bray made very similar claims. He said that he drew the cover to look like a leather-bound book with brass corners and pointed out that a sketch for the album cover relied on by Mr Lant included Venom Logo 1, suggesting that it was indeed Mr Bray’s work. The Defendants say, with some justification I think, that it is unlikely that Mr Lant would have used Mr Bray’s version of the Venom Logo long after designing Venom Logo 2. However, Mr Lant also disclosed another document showing what appears to be a later (if not final) version of the cover, which does incorporate Venom Logo 2. In any event, neither of those documents show the work in which Mr Lant now claims copyright as a separate work, but both include other elements such as the corner decoration or the Venom Logo.

The first sketch mentioned above shows the front and back of the album cover, with the album name and a cross on the front, together with corner devices and with the Venom Logo 1 beneath the cross. In my judgment, this version does not use the font which is a feature of the disputed work and is not an original sketch of that work, as opposed to a sketch for the whole album cover. The copy in evidence looks as if an initial pencil draft was gone over in pen. Mr Bray suggested in cross-examination that he had drafted the design in pencil and then Mr Lant had gone over it in pen. He did not explain why that would have been done, and in my judgment it is rather unlikely that one of them simply inked in the other’s work, without amending it. I preferred Mr Lant’s explanation that he used pencil initially and then filled in the details in ink. Mr Bray also thought that another design document disclosed by Mr Lant, with a variety of designs for the brass corners, might have been drawn by him and said that some of the handwriting on these documents was his. The latter point was not put to Mr Lant, so I do not know his position on it, but he denied Mr Bray’s suggestion that he had inked over Mr Bray’s pencil draft, whilst accepting that other changes had been made after he made the draft in evidence.

This evidence is all most unsatisfactory, and is an example, in my judgment, of Mr Bray’s case shifting as the litigation proceeded, including by adding new evidence orally. However, I consider that the dispute over whether Mr Bray created the sketch for the whole album cover does not help to resolve the question of how or by whom the disputed work with its specific style of lettering, the shape of the cross and the title’s position over the cross, was made. In the circumstances, I consider that the direct conflict of the recollections of Mr Lant and Mr Bray is irrelevant to the question of the authorship of the disputed work.

Neither Mr Lant nor Mr Bray gave a detailed explanation of how or when he said he designed the work which is in issue, rather than the album cover as a whole. Whilst I preferred the evidence of Mr Lant to that of Mr Bray on most matters and was unconvinced by Mr Bray’s changing evidence about the album cover, I have not found it easy to resolve the question of the authorship of this work. Neither Mr Lant nor Mr Bray addressed this work, as such, in their evidence. In the circumstances, I do not find that either side has proved authorship of this work, and I will dismiss both the claim and the counterclaim based upon it.