Category: Lawsuits

John Lennon’s killer is again denied parole in NY
BUFFALO, N.Y. ñ John Lennon’s killer was again denied parole in New York, nearly 30 years after gunning down the ex-Beatle outside the musician’s New York City apartment building.
A parole board decided not to release Mark David Chapman after interviewing him Tuesday by teleconference at Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York.
It was Chapman’s sixth appearance before the board since becoming eligible for parole in 2000. He will be eligible again in 2012.
Chapman, 55, had been scheduled to appear last month, but the hearing was postponed by parole officials, who said at the time they were awaiting additional information. They did not elaborate.
After Tuesday’s decision, the board wrote to Chapman that it remains concerned about “the disregard you displayed for the norms of our society and the sanctity of human life when, after careful planning, you travelled to New York for the sole purpose of killing John Lennon.”
The panel said “release remains inappropriate at this time and incompatible with the welfare of the community.”
Among those who have opposed his release is Lennon’s now 77-year-old widow, Yoko Ono, who said last month that she believed Chapman is a potential threat to her family and perhaps himself.
A call seeking comment from a spokesman for Ono was not immediately returned.
The former maintenance man from Hawaii was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison after firing five shots outside Lennon’s Manhattan building on Dec. 8, 1980, hitting Lennon four times in front of his wife and others. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.
At his last parole hearing, in 2008, Chapman told the panel he was ashamed and sorry for what he had done and had since developed a deeper understanding of the value of a human life.
He said he had been seeking notoriety and fame to counter feelings of failure.
After that interview, parole officials noted that Chapman had not been disciplined in prison since 1994 and said he had adjusted to his incarceration. But they denied release “due to concern for the public safety and welfare,” according to the written decision.
Chapman was informed of the panel’s most recent finding a few hours after the hearing. The state Division of Parole is expected to release a transcript of the interview within the next several days.
Lennon would have turned 70 this October.

Lawsuit over Nirvana catalog sale settled
LOS ANGELES ñ Court records show a management firm and Courtney Love have settled a $1 million lawsuit over the profits of the sale of Nirvana’s publishing catalog.
Love is the widow of former Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain. London & Co. sued Love two years ago, claiming she failed to share the earnings of a deal in which sold a portion of Nirvana’s catalog for nearly $20 million.
Court records show attorneys for London & Co. and Love told a judge last Wednesday that they had settled and the case was dismissed.
The Hole frontwoman has controlled many of the rights to Cobain and Nirvana’s work since his suicide in Seattle in 1994.
Love’s attorney, James Janowitz, confirmed the settlement but said he could not provide any further details.

Beach Boys Go After Katy Perry for ‘California Gurls’ Credit
The Beach Boys’ publishing company is going after Katy Perry for using the lyrics to the band’s classic song, “California Girls,” on her new summer anthem, “California Gurls.”
Beach Boys members Mike Love and Brian Wilson co-wrote “California Girls,” which reached No. 3 on the Hot 100 in 1965. Although the New York Post reported that Rondor Music, was threatening to file a lawsuit against Perry’s Capitol Records, a spokesperson for the veteran pop group’s publishing company confirmed to Billboard.com that “there is no lawsuit against the writers or publishers of ‘California Gurls.’ We have established diminutive claim. It is up to the six writers and various publishers of ‘California Gurls’ to decide whether they honor the claim or not.”
“Using the words or melody in a new song taken from an original work is not appropriate under any circumstances, particularly from one as well known and iconic as ‘California Girls,’ said the spokesperson. “Rondor Music, who publishes the works of Brian Wilson and Mike Love, is committed to protecting the rights of its artists and songwriters, and with the support of the writers, that is exactly what we are doing.”
Last week, Love told Billboard.com that he liked “California Gurls,” and also indicated that he heard similarities between Perry’s track and the Beach Boys’ original. “I think the part she did is pretty cool,” Love told Billboard.com. “There are a lot of writers on it, and I think it’s probably a stroke of genius to have the king of canine cool, Mr. [Snoop] Dogg, do his thing. But I think her creative part, her musical part, is pretty hooky. I think it brings the Beach Boys’ 1965 classic to mind, that’s for sure.”
A spokesperson for Love told the Post that “Mike and Brian wrote the song…but any legal action is up to Rondor,” while Wilson’s rep said, “Rondor owns the track and called Brian and Mike, saying they were going to complain. Brian likes Katy’s record and doesn’t know where the situation stands.”
The Beach Boys’ “California Girls” features the famous refrain, “I wish they all could be California girls.” At the end of “California Gurls,” guest artist Snoop Dogg says, “I really wish you all could be California girls.”

Neil Gaiman, Todd McFarlane testify in fight over ‘Spawn’
MADISON, Wis. ó An epic battle between comic book titans will be continued as a judge struggles to decide whether artist Todd McFarlane owes author Neil Gaiman for three characters in the classic Spawn series about a murdered CIA agent who becomes a demon.
U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb heard Monday from Gaiman, McFarlane and comic book author Brian Holguin but did not rule on Gaiman’s claim that he is owed royalties from three characters ó the demon Dark Ages Spawn and two scantily clad female angels. The judge, clad in a dark robe, gave both sides until June 25 to submit additional arguments.
Gaiman testified Monday that he believes Dark Ages Spawn was essentially a copy of Medieval Spawn, a character he created in the ninth issue of the Spawn series in 1993. He also said the angels known as Domina and Tiffany were copies of the red-haired Angela, a character who also debuted in Spawn No. 9.
A jury found in 2002 that Gaiman was due money for being a co-copyright holder for Medieval Spawn and Angela as well as a character named Cogliostro, a one-time Spawn ally.
Over the past eight years Gaiman and McFarlane have tried, unsuccessfully, to determine how much money Gaiman should get based on those three characters. Adding three more to the mix would mean even more money for Gaiman, although his attorney Allen Arntsen said after the hearing he couldn’t estimate how much was at stake.
Gaiman’s attorneys have said Gaiman plans to donate any money that comes out of the case to charity.
McFarlane created Spawn in 1992 for a start-up comic book company, Image Comics. Although it isn’t as popular as Batman or Spider-Man, the series has been fairly successful with action figures, an Emmy-winning HBO series and a 1997 movie that grossed $87 million worldwide.
Images of the characters in dispute, including the angels in thong bikinis, were projected in Crabb’s courtroom throughout the day-long hearing. Gaiman described what he said were unmistakable similarities between the characters at issue and the ones he created 17 years ago.
“It looks like the same kind of thing,” he said when shown an image of a comic book titled Dark Ages Spawn No. 1. “It’s a knight in armory kind of Spawn.”
McFarlane said the characters have some similarities because all the Spawn characters share certain features, such as green eyes and a distinctive shield.
But Dark Ages Spawn speaks differently and has a different back story, McFarlane said. He testified his only direction to Holguin, who created the character, was to “come up with something cool” and that he didn’t tell him to copy Gaiman’s creation.
Holguin said he and another artist came up with Dark Ages Spawn on their own in 1998 and any similarities with to Gaiman had done five years earlier were not intentional.
“We were trying to sell comic books,” Holguin said. “We could have done Italian Renaissance Spawn, but I’m not sure it would have sold as well.”
Gaiman said that in the Spawn universe, there is only one Spawn that comes to earth every 400 years, so Dark Ages Spawn has to be the same as the character he created because they both lived during Medieval times.
McFarlane said there are no hard and fast rules about what can happen in the pages of a Spawn comic.
“You break those rules to meet the wants and needs of the fans and the marketing,” said McFarlane, who also owns a toy company that made Spawn figures. Some of the figures, including one that came with a comic book crediting creation of a “Dark Ages Medieval Spawn” to both Gaiman and McFarlane, were entered as evidence.
Gaiman, who lives in northwestern Wisconsin near the Twin Cities, worked on the Sandman comic book series. His novels include American Gods, Coraline and The Graveyard Book, which won the John Newbery Medal.
McFarlane illustrated a number of big-time superheroes, including Batman and Spider-Man, before co-founding Image Comics. He also manufactures action figures and made headlines in 1999 when he paid $3 million for the baseball Mark McGwire hit for his then-record 70th home run in a season.

Rush upset music used in campaign
Lawyers representing Canadian rockers Rush have ordered an U.S. politician to stop using their music as part of his Senate campaign.
The musicians are said to have been left fuming after discovering Kentucky’s Republican candidate Rand Paul had been using their tracks during public events and in online adverts as he seeks election to office.
Robert Farmer, an attorney for the band’s Entertainment Group Inc. record label, has written to Paul’s campaign officials claiming the use of Rush’s music violates copyright laws, according to Courier-journal.com.
He has also asked for Paul’s political video to be removed from YouTube.com.
Farmer tells the publication, “This is not a political issue – this is a copyright issue. We would do this no matter who it is.”
The news comes just weeks after former Talking Heads star David Byrne filed a $1 million lawsuit against Florida Governor Charlie Crist, alleging he used hit Road To Nowhere in his campaign without permission.

Dodgers sue Jon Lovitz, others over season tickets
LOS ANGELES ñ Comic Jon Lovitz and others are being sued by the Los Angeles Dodgers over claims they failed to pay nearly $100,000 for season tickets for the 2010 baseball season.
Delaware-based Dodger Tickets LLC filed the breach-of-contract lawsuit Monday in Los Angeles.
The lawsuit claims Lovitz and 100 other individuals entered into a written agreement in March 2008 to buy three dugout club seats for all baseball games played at Dodger Stadium in 2008, 2009 and 2010.
The lawsuit alleges the group refused to pay $95,400 for the 2010 season.
The company is seeking $95,400 and other unspecified damages in the lawsuit
Attempts to contact Lovitz were unsuccessful.

EMI appeals ruling that Men at Work copied tune
SYDNEY ñ Record company EMI lodged an appeal Thursday against a court ruling that the Australian band Men at Work copied a flute melody from a children’s campfire song in their 1980s hit “Down Under.”
EMI filed papers with the Federal Court in Sydney listing 14 grounds for appeal and saying that songwriters Colin Hay and Ron Strykert did not breach copyright in the song.
EMI said similarities to two bars of the song “Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree” might be noticed by “the highly sensitized or educated musical ear” but were unlikely to be noticed by the ordinary listener.
The company said the inclusion of the melody was at most a form of tribute to the tune written more than 70 years ago by Australian teacher Marion Sinclair for a Girl Guides competition.
Earlier this month Federal Court Justice Peter Jacobson ruled that the famous flute riff from “Down Under” had “a sufficient degree of objective similarity” to parts of the children’s tune.
Publishing company Larrikin Music, which holds the copyright for “Kookaburra,” is seeking millions of dollars in royalties from EMI and the songwriters.
EMI also argued in its appeal that the Girl Guides Association of Victoria state actually owned the copyright, as they sponsored the 1934 song competition.
A date has not been set for the appeal to be heard.
“Down Under” and the album “Business As Usual” topped the Australian, American and British charts in early 1983. The song remains an unofficial anthem for Australia and was ranked fourth in a 2001 music industry survey of the best Australian songs. Men at Work won the 1983 Grammy Award for Best New Artist.
“Kookaburra,” about an Australian native bird, is a campfire favorite from New Zealand to Canada.

’80s hit Down Under copies kids’ song, court says
Australian band Men at Work copied a well-known children’s campfire song for the flute melody in its 1980s hit Down Under and owes the owner years of royalties, a court ruled Thursday.
Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree was written more than 70 years ago by Australian teacher Marion Sinclair for a Girl Guides competition, and the song has been a favourite around campfires from New Zealand to Canada.
The teacher died in 1988, and publishing company Larrikin Music owns the copyright to her song about the native Australian bird. Larrikin filed the copyright lawsuit last year.
“I have come to the view that the flute riff in Down Under Ö infringes on the copyright of Kookaburra because it replicates in material form a substantial part of Ms. Sinclair’s 1935 work,” Federal Court Justice Peter Jacobson said.
He ordered the parties back in court Feb. 25 to discuss the compensation Larrikin should receive from songwriters Colin Hay and Ron Strykert and Men at Work’s record companies Sony BMG Music Entertainment and EMI Songs Australia.
Adam Simpson, Larrikin Music’s lawyer, said outside court the company might seek up to 60 per cent of the royalties Down Under earned since its release ó an amount that could total millions.
The songwriters and their recording companies did not immediately comment.
Down Under and the album Business As Usual topped the Australian, American and British charts in early 1983. The song remains an unofficial anthem for Australia and was ranked fourth in a 2001 music industry survey of the best Australian songs. Men at Work won the 1983 Grammy Award for best new artist.

‘MacGyver’ creator aims to stop spoof
The man behind MacGyver is consulting lawyers in a bid to block the release of an upcoming spoof movie based on the 1980s TV series.
A new film, titled MacGruber and starring Val Kilmer, is set to hit cinemas in April, but Lee Zlotoff, creator of the original show, alleges the parody breaches copyright laws as he retained the movie rights to his TV creation.
A lawyer for Zlotoff has fired off a series of cease-and-desist letters to executives at Relativity Media, the company behind the new comedy, according to Thresq.com.
Zlotoff’s attorney, Paul Mayersohn, tells the website his client is currently considering filing a lawsuit in a bid to block the film’s release.
He says, “We feel they’re infringing our rights.”

Report: David Letterman’s alleged blackmailer wants a plea deal
The man accused of trying to extort $2 million from David Letterman is seeking a plea deal that would have him spend only a year in jail.
Robert Halderman, the CBS News producer who was arrested in October, is reportedly talking to prosecutors about a deal in which he’d plead guilty in exchange for a one-year sentence — way below the maximum 15 years he’d face if convicted by a jury.
That’s the word, anyway, from the New York Post, which cites unnamed sources in its report on the plea offer. Halderman’s lawyer, Gerald Shargel, denies it, saying, “There have been no plea negotiations. None whatsoever.”
Shargel also tells the paper he’s still pursuing a motion to have the case dismissed and will file more papers on the motion later this week.
If a deal is made, it won’t be by current Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau. Incoming D.A. Cyrus Vance Jr. takes office next month and will oversee the rest of the case.
Halderman was arrested Oct. 1 after allegedly telling Letterman he would blab about the “Late Show” host’s affairs with staff members unless he received $2 million. “I have said, for a price, I will sign a confidentiality agreement and I will not make this information public. That’s the deal,” Halderman said, according to prosecutors.