Understanding TPO Court in the Music Industry
Pop ‘stache’s irreverent approach to smashing through the interpretive junk of people who’d like to ascribe meaning to a song’s lyrics also applies to the curious world of music agreements, where most indie musicians find themselves out of their depth. As we’ve discussed in previous posts, Pop ‘stache is not a legal services website. We can’t and shouldn’t offer you legal advice in much the same way that a guy in a band can’t help you with your divorce. While the two industries do share a clientele, the rules for one are not necessarily the rules for the other.
That said, some legal concepts affect musicians and music professionals alike, and some of those concepts can be a great source of knowledge for musicians with an interest in the structure of their “job”, such as it is, or the structure of the agreement they’ve signed to become a part of the music industry machine. One such concept, relevant to Songwriters and Composers, Producers and Engineers, as well as Music Publishers, Managers, and Agents, is what’s known in legal terminology as a first instance court known as TPO Court.
TPO Court is a contraction of the Latin phrase Traduit par Ordonnance, which roughly translates to “translated by Ordonnance”. Ordonnance is a concept specific to the Continental legal systems of France, Germany, and the rest of the world’s better known Common Law jurisdictions. In the United States, a TPO Court refers to a Tribunal de Première Instance, or Trial Court. In practice, the term has the meaning of any first instance court; the first judicial authority before which a legal proceeding occurs.
In the entertainment industry, a TPO Court is the first court before which a performer or executive accused of violating a contract with stakeholders in other countries appears. The concept of the TPO Court never existed until the early 1990s, when a string of lawsuits between American managers and French artists of varying levels of success shed light on the conflict of U.S. law with the French idea that a performer’s rights are inalienable, that is, they cannot be legally given up or transferred.
The first contentious area of French jurisprudence revealed by the TPO Court concept was a legal principle known as the droit de suite, or right of trust. The right of trust is essentially a claim whereby the creator of an object, an author or an artist, can get a cut of the revenues generated by subsequent trades of such objects, such as in fine art, music, or publishing.
As the case of Delay v. 577885 Ontario Inc. et al. (also known as Delay v. Robinson) demonstrated, TPO Courts differ radically from the more well-known Common Law jurisdictions of the United States, and as such, many Native French performers and executives have met with trouble in the United States as soon as they try to enforce employment agreements.
The knowledge of the TPO Court concept can benefit musicians, singers, songwriters, and recording artists in that it demonstrates just how differently the legal systems handle these types of disputes. Armed with this information, musicians can offer themselves better protection by explaining to managers, venues, and other entities the need to provide them with translators in signing contracts, allowing for the right of trust, and ensuring that they are guaranteed to be paid in the event that someone attempts to seize their royalties.
The TPO Court concept is an interesting little wrinkle of law that few have had the time or luxury to explore. Most musicians work too hard to worry about the inner workings of the law and its terminology, but an understanding of this particular little item can on occasion help musicians avoid being taken advantage of.
