MOSCOW, July 24 The Intellectual Rights Court agreed with two lower instances, which denied musician Egor Rakitin (pseudonym — Big Baby Tape) to recover 185 million rubles from LLC » Warner Music», the Russian structure of the American record company Warner Music Group.
As follows from the information in the file of arbitration cases, the IP on Wednesday rejected Rakitin’s cassation appeal against the decision of the Moscow Arbitration Court made in December and the ruling of the Ninth Arbitration Court of Appeal, issued in March. 
The plaintiff's representative in the first instance said that the claim was for the recovery of compensation for violation of Rakitin's copyright on 37 musical works that the defendant placed in his music catalog on the Apple iTunes service. According to him, the works are used for commercial purposes, although the musician did not transfer the rights to them and did not receive any remuneration. The plaintiff explained that the amount of the claim was calculated based on compensation of 5 million rubles for each work.
The defendant stated that the rights to the phonograms were granted to him by individual entrepreneur Vadim Mats, who was involved in the case by a third party, who in turn has a licensing agreement with Rakitin. Matz's representative handed over to the court the contract with the musician. The plaintiff's representative called the agreement invalid and asked to postpone the meeting to familiarize himself with the document, but the court rejected the request, explaining that the agreement was signed by two parties and the plaintiff should have it.
The court of first instance, dismissing the claim, indicated that it was “brought not in defense of exclusive rights to phonograms, which are the object of related rights, but in defense of copyright in musical works (the existence of which has not been proven by the plaintiff).” As the court noted, from the contracts presented by Rakitin for the recording and mixing of musical works with Sakura Family LLC, “it is not possible to unambiguously identify the musical works the rights to which belong to the plaintiff.”
The American Warner Music Group, along with Universal Music and Sony Music, is the “big three” record companies, which account for up to 80% of music publishing. At the beginning of 2022, all three companies announced the termination or suspension of their activities in Russia.