I believe this may be referring to a case in which Hyperion were sued by a musicologist < snip >
Lionel Sawkins vs Hyperion Records (a work which lay in the public domain), as a result of the performing edition he had made.
That's the crucial difference - the performers were perfectly entitled to play from the original manuscripts (or an alternative performing edition, or even their own edition). Sawkins was able to claim copyright in the edition because of the work he demonstrated had gone into its preparation (this sort of "blood sweat and tears" test is absolutely standard in assertaining copyright ownership in such works: it's not necessarily to do with how original the product is, but how much effort went into its preparation; see the copyright that is held in databases of horse racing results, eg). Actually, Sawkins did no more than what any musicologist has been entitled to do; he was just the first who felt compelled to defend his rights against a record company.
The case set a precedent for other claims against Hyperion (although I don't know if they were as successful as the test case).
I didn't know about other cases (would rather give the lie to all the medieval scholars who were up in arms that Sawkins's claim was going to bring about the end of early music performance).
Astonishingly the Court awarded the musicologist in question enormous amounts of money for his "broken copyright".
It wasn't the amount of the award that damaged Hyperion's finances, however, but the legal fees arising from their decision to appeal the initial verdict against them. Let's not forget the fact that Hyperion had put the recording in question on sale before contracts with all concerned parties (including Sawkins) had been signed, a rather serious and silly slip, particularly in light of their appeal decision.
This "rights" question is a nice idea in principle, but in the end it scuppers much work that's barely at break-even anyhow. My bro was doing some "historick musicke" for a BBC series, and the band were costumed and accoutered in period manner. However, they were inadvertently featured in one shot. The Musicians Union (unbeknown to the musicians who had played) tried to force the BBC to pay them full screen rates. This was so expensive that the scene had to be refilmed, without them. And they'd never even tried to claim this money anyhow, and were quite satisfied with their agreed "audio" fee.
Of course, this has nothing to do with copyright, or the Hyperion case...
