The Court of Appeal’s Civil Division finalized that decision today, after the Competition Appeal Tribunal in August 2025 denied Rowntree’s proposed class action. Unsurprisingly, given the years of litigation and the involved issue at the heart of the dispute, the legal battle has brought with it several twists and turns.

Even so, its core question is straightforward enough: Is PRS shortchanging songwriters by making across-the-board black box payments on a pro-rata basis? As we broke down nearly 12 months ago, Rowntree believes so – including because most PRS members are songwriters and because publishers are likelier to verify the accuracy of metadata as well as payments themselves.

These and other points allegedly result in a raw deal on the songwriter’s end – to the tune of an alleged £200 million (currently $265.2 million) in black box royalties at issue.

In the opposite corner, PRS has been pushing back against the claims from the get-go, including by underscoring its matching efforts and stressing the perceived absence of a superior distribution approach.

At the top level, the court determined “that the PRS has taken reasonable and proportionate steps to achieve accuracy” in matching and payouts. Furthermore, as the non-profit “needs to select some way or another of sharing the black box royalties and cannot simply accumulate them,” the pro-rata system must be compared to a real-world alternative as opposed to a hypothetical model that’s entirely accurate.

Running with this idea, the court proceeded to emphasize the filing party’s alleged failure to propose a better distribution method. (The floated possibility of per-capita compensation “would be far worse for many songwriter members than the pro rata rule,” according to the text’s summary of PRS’ position.)

“In my judgment the reason why no counterfactual [royalty-distribution proposal] has been advanced, even in general terms, is manifest: it is that the very data failure problem which has given rise to the black box royalties means that there is no plausible basis for suggesting a more accurate (let alone fairer) distribution,” Lord Justice Miles added.

Lastly, the pro-rata payouts represent PRS’ “best attempt to approximate a fair outcome in cases of data failure,” and as noted, “black box revenues have to be distributed somehow,” per the decision.

In the court’s view, then, the pro-rata approach ensures that “members who share in the matched revenues get something more than they otherwise would get,” referring to a piece of the black box. On the other hand, however, PRS could have “chosen instead to donate the black box royalties revenues to an appropriate charity.”

“Under the pro rata rule members as a whole do better than that. They receive something that they cannot say they are otherwise strictly entitled to under the rules of the PRS,” Lord Justice Miles concluded.

With that, and because Rowntree is said to therefore lack “a realistically arguable case that the PRS has engaged in exploitative abuse by unfair conduct,” the appeal is no more. In a statement, PRS took a victory lap and criticized the action as “a complete misrepresentation of our policies from the outset.”

“The Court of Appeal has once again recognised that this claim has no reasonable prospect of success and has upheld the Competition Appeal Tribunal’s earlier decision to strike it out, vindicating our longstanding position that this claim was never in the interests of PRS members.

This class action was fundamentally flawed, and was a complete misrepresentation of our policies from the outset. It would have resulted in PRS members suing the society they collectively own, despite there being soaring costs attached and no logical basis for doing so.

We welcome the decision and look forward to continuing to focus on our main priority which has always been, and remains, delivering value for our members and protecting their rights wherever and whenever their music is used.”