[2025] EWHC 1954 (IPEC)

There was a similar change in the Defendants’ case on how this Photograph was taken. Again, it was initially pleaded as taken by Mr Bray, and then in the Part 18 Replies it was said that Mr Nichol took it, having been commissioned to do so by Mr Bray, and that the negative was owned by Mr Bray at the time the photograph was taken. In his witness statement in reply, for the first time Mr Bray said that this Photograph was owned by a management company called Beardawn Ltd. He did not explain how or why that was so, nor how he had acquired the copyright he now claims in it.

Mr Bray’s evidence about this Photograph is in my view also unreliable, and again I was not satisfied that Mr Bray has any real recollection of the arrangements made in relation to this Photograph. He gave no explanation as to why he rather than one of the other band members or Neat Records would have commissioned the Photograph to be taken, nor as to why Mr Nichol – a professional photographer – would have taken the picture using Mr Bray’s materials. Indeed, his witness statement did not repeat or reinforce the allegation in the Part 18 Replies that the material used belonged to him rather than to Mr Nichol. He offered no detail about the alleged commission. The fact that the Photograph features Mr Bray’s child does not seem to me to have any bearing on the issue. The reference to Beardawn Ltd is also puzzling and unsatisfactory.

Again, it appears to me at least equally plausible that Mr Nichol would have been commissioned to take the Photograph by Neat Records. In the absence of any evidence to corroborate Mr Bray’s claim that he rather than Neat Records commissioned and paid Mr Nichol to take the Photograph, and given the contradictions in his evidence, I find that he has not proved that he is the owner of the copyright in it.

In summary, I have upheld Mr Lant’s claim to copyright in the works identified as (2) Venom Logo 2, (3) Goat Head Lucifer, (4) Sigil of Baphomet and (5) Legions Logo. I have found that Mr Bray was the author of (1) Venom Logo 1. I have dismissed both sides’ claims to copyright in (6) the At War with Satan design, and dismissed Mr Bray’s claim to own the copyright in the two Photographs.