A concert organiser played two protected songs at open-air events without a licence. A year later a Ukrainian commercial court awarded UAH 153,088 in statutory compensation, then a further UAH 30,000 in the claimant's legal costs. The most instructive part of the case is how the infringement was recorded.

What happened

A Ukrainian company ran two concerts at the M. M. Gryshko National Botanical Garden on 28 and 29 June 2025; tickets cost UAH 450. In May the Ukrainian collecting society had seen the programme announcements on the organiser's website, phoned repeatedly about a licence and then sent a written offer to conclude one. No licence was obtained.

The claim was brought by the collecting society on behalf of a British rights society, under a representation agreement concluded in 2019. Two works were in issue.

How the infringement was recorded

The mechanism is simple, which is exactly why it works. A representative of the society attended the concert as an ordinary member of the public, bought a ticket and drew up a record of the public performance.

The first concert was interrupted by weather and visitors were invited to return the next day. The recording was therefore made twice — on 29 June with video.

What the court then counted is a separate question — and more important than the amount. In its conclusions the court relied only on the record of 29 June, which documented the use of two works, and multiplied the compensation by two. The record of 28 June is not mentioned in the conclusions at all.

So the unit was the work, not the concert. The difference matters: if the unit is the work, an event with a couple of dozen songs from someone else's catalogue produces sums of an entirely different order.

The evidence also included the paid ticket and, notably, announcements and short videos the organiser had published on its own Instagram account. The venue's own social media worked against it.

How the award was calculated

Ukrainian law gives the court a choice: instead of damages it may award statutory compensation of between 2 and 200 subsistence minimums for able-bodied persons, or double — for wilful infringement, triple — the licence fee that would have been payable.

The claimant chose the first option and claimed 23 subsistence minimums per infringement. With the 2026 figure of UAH 3,328, the calculation was 23 × 3,328 × 2 infringements = UAH 153,088.

The factors relied on: duration and scale of the infringement, foreseeable loss, income derived from the infringement, and the absence of any intention to obtain a licence in the future. The reasoning also pointed to commercial use for profit, with tickets at UAH 450.

The claim was granted in full, and a further UAH 3,328 in court fee was awarded.

The defendant did not appear — and it changed nothing

The defendant's representative did not attend. The case was heard in its absence and the claim granted in full.

Two weeks later the court made a supplementary award of UAH 30,000 towards the claimant's legal costs, reducing the amount claimed as excessive relative to the complexity of the case.

With the court fee, the total exceeds UAH 186,000 — for two songs recorded at a single evening.

A point for anyone litigating these cases

Both the claim and the court's conclusions speak of “communication to the public” (доведення до загального відома). Yet the judgment itself quotes the statutory definition: transmission by radio waves, satellite or cable over such a distance that the sound or image could not be perceived without it.

A live concert does not fit that definition. The law has a separate form of use for it — public performance. The discrepancy did not affect the outcome because the defendant neither appeared nor objected. With an active defendant, it is a ready-made argument.

The most common objection in such disputes also went untested — whether the society actually holds a mandate for the specific foreign repertoire. A related company raised it in correspondence, but nobody appeared in court, so there was no adversarial examination. The judgment should not be read as confirming the scope of the society's mandate.

Who this actually concerns

Public performance of music is use of a copyright work and requires authorisation. This is not limited to concerts:

• cafés, bars and restaurants with background music;
• shops, shopping centres, salons;
• gyms and fitness clubs;
• hotels, waiting areas, transport;
• events, presentations, corporate functions.

A foreign rights holder is no obstacle. Ukrainian collecting societies hold representation agreements with foreign societies, which is exactly what happened here — the claim was brought for a British society by a Ukrainian one.

What to advise clients operating in Ukraine

The straightforward route is a licence agreement with a collecting society and a monthly fee — an order of magnitude cheaper than statutory compensation.

An alternative for venues is commercially licensed background music services with their own catalogue cleared for business use.

What not to do is ignore correspondence from collecting societies. As this case shows, warnings precede the claim, and their existence is later relied on to justify the level of compensation.

Notably, the written warning did not even reach the organiser directly: the society wrote to a related company, which replied that the concerts were run by another entity. The court inferred the defendant's awareness from that correspondence between related parties.

If your client operates venues or events in Ukraine

We advise on music licensing, collecting society agreements and copyright enforcement in Ukraine. More on how we work with IP firms.

See also: Free Ukrainian trademark search · Madrid designations in Ukraine