A singer who wrote and recorded a song which featured in the film The Commitments has lost her claim for £30,000 damages for breach of copyright.
Ms Aisling Meath, a former RTE freelance journalist, told the Circuit Civil Court that in 1986, while a member of the group Paranoid Visions, she wrote the lyrics of Beauty Queen.
Ms Meath, of Dunsink Avenue, Finglas, Dublin, told Judge John O'Hagan that at the time she did not like the idea of women being represented as objects in beauty pageants and had written the song as a protest. It had been included on two albums, City of Screams and After the Faction, which were released by Paranoid Visions.
In 1987 she left the music industry. When she saw The Commitments in 1991, she recognised a four-line extract from her song.
Ms Meath told Mr Adrian Redmond, counsel for Mr Peter Jones, another member of the group, that Mr Jones and the band had threatened to sue the film-makers Beacon Promotions for unlicensed use of Beauty Queen.
She said Mr Jones, of Mount Eagle View, Leopardstown Heights, Dublin, had registered Beauty Queen and other songs with the Irish Music Rights Organisation as being the property of himself and the group.
Ms Meath said Beacon Promotions had settled the action before it reached court for $10,000. She claimed that money ought to have been hers. Instead, it had been shared among the existing six members of Paranoid Visions.
Judge O'Hagan, dismissing Ms Meath's claim without any order for costs, said he believed there had been an implied consent on her part that once she left the group anything she left behind was for the benefit of the group to deal with as it wished.