On 20 October 2026, the Court of Appeal (Price Findlay CJ, Byer JA and Farara JA (Ag.)), sitting in Dominica, allowed the appeal in Eastern Caribbean Collective Organization for Music Rights (ECCO) Inc. v Neon Briggs and the Attorney General of Dominica, Appeal No. DOMHCVAP2025/0001, with costs to the appellant. The Court set aside the order of Master Cenac-Dantes dated 20 December 2024, which had struck out ECCO’s claim in its entirety on the ground that ECCO had no standing to sue, and dismissed that limb of the Attorney General’s strike out application.
ECCO claims that the public performance rights in several musical works were infringed at an event held in Dominica. It pleaded ownership of those rights by assignment, under its membership agreements with its own members and its reciprocal agreements with affiliated societies, including the Copyright Music Organisation of Trinidad and Tobago. The master, relying on Mega-Plex Entertainment Corporation v ECCO SLUHCVAP2017/0032, held that ECCO was not the copyright owner of the works and so had no standing to bring the claim.
The Court of Appeal held that, under section 23 of the Copyright Act 2003, copyright may be transferred by assignment in whole or in part, and an assignment transfers ownership. Whether ECCO owns the rights allegedly infringed is a question of mixed fact and law. It requires the court to construe the agreements and to decide whether the acts complained of fall within the rights assigned. Since ownership was disputed on the pleadings, it could only be resolved at trial, and the strike out jurisdiction should be exercised over the interpretation of agreements only in rare circumstances. The Court further held that the master had misapplied Mega-Plex. That decision did not lay down a general rule preventing ECCO from suing. It was confined to its own facts, where ECCO relied on its by-laws and internal documents for standing, whereas here ECCO relies on assignments made under section 23. The master’s own observation that it was unclear whether the agreements transferred ownership pointed, in the Court’s view, to the conclusion that the question was apt for trial.
The Court directed that, if the Attorney General pursues the remaining limb of the application, which contends that the claim discloses no reasonable cause of action against the State, it is to be heard before a different master or judge.
Counsel
D. Victor C. Elliott-Hamilton appeared for the successful appellant.