A small record company has pulled off a David v. Goliath defeat in court against publishing giant EMI, as a U.S. District Court in New York has vacated a $100,000 judgment against Karen Records Inc. for copyright infringement and dismissed the complaint citing EMI Entertainment World Inc.’s lack of standing to bring a claim.

Karen Records Inc. describes itself as “the home of the best merengues, bachatas and sones.”  In 2005, EMI sued it for copyright infringement, claiming it owed unpaid statutory royalties on four songs Karen included on three CDs it released between 1999 and 2001: La Colegiala by Grover Walter Leon Aguilar;  Corazón Partío by Alejandro Sanz; Cuando Acaba el Placer by Nacho Mano; and  Fuiste Mia un Verano by Leonardo Favio and Vico Berti.

In 2009 the court granted summary judgment, finding that EMI had terminated Karens’ compulsory licenses to certain of the songs and that Karen never obtained a license to the remaining composition. And in 2011, the court found willful copyright infringement and granted EMI a $100,000 judgment. Read the rest of this entry »

Happy wha, wha, what? Lawsuit? That song that’s crooned daily around the world to commemorate how we’ve gotten a year older is copyrighted — or is it in the public domain? Jennifer Nelson, a New York documentary filmmaker, has sued Warner/Chappell in a federal court in Manhattan (thanks to Billboard for the online post of the suit) challenging the music publisher over its claims to the song Happy Birthday, which, the New York Times reports, she says long ago entered  the public domain.

Nelson, who is producing Happy Birthday, a documentary about the song’s history and future, signed a license with Warner/Chappell, paying $1,500 to include the song in a scene — and to avoid paying a $150,000 fine. She now says she never knew the tune belonged to anyone and points to evidence that it evolved from Good Morning to All, penned by sisters Mildred J. Hill and Patty Smith Hill before the turn of the 20th century. Read the rest of this entry »

The Ghost Rider has been brought back to life by the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York City in a ruling that gives writer Gary Friedrich another shot to prove he didn’t relinquish his renewal rights in the comic.

The appellate court found that a lower court erred in granting summary judgment in favor of Marvel Characters Inc., there holding that Friedrich had assigned all of his renewal rights to the Ghost Rider.

Friedrich penned the first Ghost Rider comic for publication in the April, 1972, issue of Marvel Spotlight.  This case arose from a “work-for-hire agreement” that the publisher of Marvel comics required Friedrich and all of its free-lance artists to sign in 1978.  He claims the agreement covered only future work and that he retained rights in the main characters and original story. In 2004, after learning Sony Pictures planned to make a Ghost Rider movie, his attorney contacted Sony, asserting his rights to the comic; he later sued Marvel for copyright infringement. Read the rest of this entry »

Entertainment lawyers may need to park an additional reference work next to those well-thumbed copies of Strunk & White and The Bluebook: There’s a new style guide for the music industry, as reported in deft fashion in the Wall Street Journal.

While the 24-page rulebook tackles concerns about ampersands, capitalization and orders of mention, the work, as its issuers detail, also “outlines a set of metadata guidelines that can be used by musicians, managers, and labels to improve data quality for artist, track, and album information through common naming conventions and data entry standards. This, in turn, will allow digital retailers to create a more efficient ingestion process for songs, albums, music videos, ringtones, and any other product that contains music metadata and make it easier for consumers to find what they are looking for, leading to increased sales.”

Alas, here’s a fond sigh for the days of liner notes and know-it-all slacker clerks at record or CD shops. Want a copy? Go here.

A court ruling has ended on a sour note for embattled musician Sly Stone, who has lost yet another fight to regain royalties that flow from his catalog of hit songs.  The Court of Appeals for the State of California handed down a ruling in favor of music giants Sony Music Entertainment, Warner/Chappell Music Inc. and Broadcast Music Inc., among others, deciding they did not have liability as a result of a lack of due diligence for royalty payments that allegedly were diverted from Stone.

Sylvester Stewart, professionally known as Sly Stone, enjoyed great success in the late ’60s and ’70s as the charismatic front man of the band, “Sly and The Family Stone.”  Known for songs such as Dance to the Music, Everyday People and Family Affair, the band ushered in a genre of music fused with funk, soul and psychedelic rock. In the ensuing decades, however, Stewart has found himself battling drugs and financial woes, reportedly reduced to near destitution and living a nomadic life on the streets of Los Angeles in a camper.

The appellate decision paints a painful picture of Stewart’s fall from a lavish life at a musical pinnacle, with his inattention and ignorance to his business and legal affairs extracting a huge toll.

Read the rest of this entry »

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While those who negotiate and make deals in the music industry may be doing a little dance about Apple’s reported official entry as early as today into broadcast streaming, the future appears to be dim for online hosting services such as Rapidshare, which are struggling to find the same success hosting legal versus unlicensed music and other materials.

Recent judicial action to deter companies from facilitating illegal music downloads has caused Rapidshare to focus on preventing illicit use of its services.  A court order against Newzbin1, a hosting service, requiring internet service providers to block the site in Britain and the seizing and shutdown of MegaUpload hosting service sites may have been catalysts for Rapidshare’s change.

But even as anti-piracy crackdowns continue, with litigation and regulatory enforcement, the music industry also is expanding its efforts to boost by every means the legal, licensed consumption of its creative product, particularly in the burgeoning area of internet radio and streaming broadcasts, where providers like Pandora and Spotify now will see the jolt of a market-mover like Apple enter the field. Read the rest of this entry »

A U.S. District Court in New York has done a double-take on its Agence France Presse v. Morel decision handed down in January.

Granting a motion of reconsideration, the court clarified its previous ruling to reflect that photographer Daniel Morel (left, in a Karl Melander photograph) was entitled to receive only one award of statutory damages per work infringed jointly by defendants Agence France Presse and Getty Images.

This has been a much-heralded case because analysts have said it provided a legal slap and warning even to large institutions that they may not go online, particularly to social media sites, to nab, then use for commercial purposes the copyrighted creative works of others without permission. Read the rest of this entry »

Mita Carriman, a onetime indie musician herself and now a lawyer in entertainment, intellectual property and small business law, has offered some noteworthy, hard-nosed counsel to indie musicians, busting a quartet of music-law myths, fallacious notions that can harm composers and performers if they rely on them. Read the rest of this entry »

The First Amendment can’t bowl over the publicity rights of a former Rutgers quarterback when it comes to his depiction in a video game:

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in a case closely watched by powerful interests in sports and entertainment, has overturned a lower court ruling that granted summary judgment for Electronic Arts Inc.

The federal district court had found the video game-maker’s freedom of expression outweighed plaintiff-athlete Ryan Hart’s publicity rights and that the product in question contained creative elements that were transformative fair use. Read the rest of this entry »