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During her acceptance speech at Billboard’s Women in Music event, rapper Latto shouted out the most important women in her life who helped push the platinum selling artist to where she is today, including her attorney, Bernie Lawrence-Watkins: “My lawyer is a Black woman — Bernie. Hey Bernie!”
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“It’s not too often you hear clients shouting out their lawyers. So for that to happen in a public forum, shows that she is appreciative of the services that our firm provides,” Lawrence-Watkins says. “It was a very touching moment for me.” (Jon Platt, chairman and CEO of Sony Music Publishing, even gave her a congratulatory call after the shoutout.)
Lawrence-Watkins began working with the “Big Energy” singer when she was a 17-year-old aspiring Atlanta rapper, fresh off of Lifetime’s reality TV competition, The Rap Game, which she won. After receiving a call from her father, the three met and have been working together ever since — with Lawrence-Watkins securing rights for all of Latto’s projects, brand rights, trademark, performances, tour deals and endorsement deals, including Sprite, WingStop, Burger King and Spotify. “I always make sure the deal is not done until she’s satisfied,” says Lawrence-Watkins.
With over 24 years of experience under her belt, Lawrence-Watkins’ roster of clients also includes 21 Savage, Baby Tate and Young Nudy, all of whom she negotiated record deals for. She picked up 21 Savage in 2015, during the making of his wildly successful EP, Savage Mode, released the following year. After the project’s release, Lawrence-Watkins describes the ensuing label response as a “bidding war,” with Epic Records coming out on top. Lawrence-Watkins negotiated quite the deal for 21, including ownership of all his masters, which she owes to the rapper’s leverage.
“[He] created a name and a brand that was very dominant in hip-hop,” Lawrence-Watkins explains. “When it was time to negotiate a deal, we could make certain requests. It was just about understanding where your client is at a particular time in their career.”
But it was a failed deal that led Lawrence-Watkins to becoming a lawyer in the first place. Raised in East Elmhurst, Queens, by way of Dominica, she grew up with an itch to perform — even attending LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, which boasts alumni including Nicki Minaj, Kelis and Eartha Kitt. While attending Howard University, her brother Ron “Amen-Ra” Lawrence got signed to a Columbia imprint as an artist, but struggled to make money through his music, eventually losing the deal.
“My brother was a starving artist,” she explains. “I watched him go on a lot of promo tours, not being paid. [He was] trying to get videos on MTV at that time and the notion was, ‘Oh, your video is too Black.’ I said, ‘I need to be part of this industry to help make a change. How do I do things in a way that’s going to be beneficial to my client, and [causes] people take notice and start doing things differently?’”
Her brother’s experience in the industry led Bernie into law, with Ron himself eventually moving into production as a member of P. Diddy’s original studio team, The Hitmen. The transition proved successful, with Ron going on to co-produce “Hypnotize” by The Notorious B.I.G, “Been Around the World” by Diddy, “Money, Power, Respect” by The Lox and “Love Like This” by Faith Evans.
Representing Ron and fellow hitmaking producer Bangladesh, Bernie — who now operates under the slogan “Bernie gets you paid” — began her own practice and eventually began representing small businesses and artists, in addition to her usual roster of producers. “I wanted to be someone who was part of the change, someone who was going to really fight for my clients’ rights and not close deals until they were done correctly,” she says.
According to the American Bar Association, only 5% of lawyers are African-American. Bernie attributes this number in part to a lack of visibility of Black lawyers, and low effort by firms to hire them. She hopes that her presence as a Black woman in the space will help inspire a new generation of lawyers of color.
“When you look at talent in the hip hop, and r&b community, a lot of them are African-American. You don’t see a lot of us that are representing them. There are so many of us that are talented that can do the work, but for some reason, we’re not being represented,” she explains. “When people say, ‘We did a search and we didn’t find anyone that’s qualified,’ that’s BS.”
From time to time, Bernie says she’ll receive calls from other women lawyers seeking her advice on how to start their own firms. “Working in a white male-dominated industry, I made a decision to not go the traditional route and build a firm,” she explains. “It wasn’t easy, [but] I understand that I’m not just doing this for me. I’m doing this for other women who are looking to follow in my footsteps.”
A federal judge says Ed Sheeran‘s copyright accusers can’t stage a live performance of Marvin Gaye’s iconic “Let’s Get It On” in the courtroom during an upcoming trial over Sheeran’s “Thinking Out Loud,” calling such evidence “unreliable and inadmissible.”
With a trial looming next month over whether Sheeran’s hit infringed Gaye‘s song, the star’s lawyers had warned that the proposed rendition would “intentionally misrepresent” the song in question in the case and, if performed in front of jurors, would constitute “grounds for a mistrial.”
In a decision Friday (March 10), U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton seemingly agreed. In a brief ruling that came without a lengthy written explanation, the judge ruled that “omissions, additions and errors” in the proposed performance of Gaye’s song made it “unreliable and inadmissible as evidence.”
But Judge Stanton declined to issue a similar ruling on a separate key question: Whether Sheeran’s accusers will be allowed to play a YouTube clip of a 2014 concert in which the star seamlessly transitioned between “Thinking” and “Let’s Get It On.”
In seeking to introduce the clip into the trial, lawyers for the accusers have argued that the mash-up video is “among the most important and critical evidence” in their case against Sheeran. The star’s attorneys have argued back that it’s falsely incriminating and will confuse jurors into ruling against the pop star.
In Friday’s decision, Judge Stanton denied Sheeran’s request to ban the video from the proceedings, meaning that the clip is fair game for now. But the judge also explicitly noted that Sheeran’s attorneys could re-raise their objections to the video at trial — meaning the infamous YouTube video might ultimately still be barred from the courtroom.
In a statement to Billboard, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs praised Judge Stanton’s ruling on the concert video: “We are very gratified that the court recognizes the significance of the fact that Mr. Sheeran elected to play ‘Let’s Get It On’ in his medley with ‘Thinking Out Loud,’” says Patrick R. Frank. “It proves the point we have asserted all along — ‘Thinking Out Loud’ would not exist but for ‘Let’s Get It On.’”
An attorney for Sheeran declined to comment on Friday’s orders.
The case against Sheeran was filed way back in 2017 by heirs of Ed Townsend, who co-wrote “Let’s Get It On.” Gaye’s heirs, who once famously sued Robin Thicke over accusations that his “Blurred Lines” was stolen from the legendary singer, are not involved in the case.
Sheeran’s lawyers have long argued that the star did nothing wrong, claiming that “Thinking Out Loud” and “Let’s Get It On” share only “unprotectable and commonplace elements” that are not covered by copyright law. But Judge Stanton has repeatedly refused to decide the case in their favor, ruling that the dispute is close enough that it must be decided by a jury.
Since the start, the case has been dominated by technical legal questions about the scope of the actual copyright that Townsend’s heirs own and about what audio could be played for jurors. Could they hear the famous version of “Let’s Get It On” performed by Gaye? Or only the more bare-bones “deposit copy” featuring basic musical notation that the heirs actually own?
Back in 2020, Stanton ruled that it was the latter. He pointed out that Gaye’s famous 1973 sound recording includes many musical elements that aren’t covered in the stripped-down copyright that’s owned by Townsend’s heirs.
Faced with that ruling, both sides have prepared special audio versions to play for jurors at the upcoming trial, aiming to include only the elements from the more basic version of “Let’s Get It On.” Sheeran’s lawyers hired a musicologist from New York University to create a computer-generated recording; attorneys for his accusers hired their own musician, who created two different recordings of the song.
Last month, Sheeran’s lawyers called foul. They said the accusers’ versions were a “distortion” of the deposit copy, containing musical elements from Gaye’s famous version that don’t appear in the deposit copy. And they warned that the Townsend heirs were planning not just to play their version, but to call the musician as a witness and stage a “purported live performance” of it during the trial.
“Allowing plaintiffs’ proposed performance to be played to the jury would be irremediably prejudicial, constituting grounds for a mistrial because, once LGO is performed for the jury containing elements nowhere found in the deposit copy, it cannot be unheard by the jurors,” Sheeran’s attorneys wrote.
In Friday’s order, Judge Stanton granted that motion, excluding the accusers’ versions from the trial and barring them from performing them live. He offered little detail on his reasoning, other than the statement about “omissions, additions and errors” he said would make the versions unreliable as evidence.
Barring a delay, the upcoming trial is set to kick off on April 24.
The Rolling Stones members Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were hit with a copyright lawsuit on Friday (March 10) claiming their 2020 single “Living in a Ghost Town” — a rare new song from the rock legends — lifted material from a pair of little-known earlier tracks.
In a lawsuit filed in New Orleans federal court, songwriter Sergio Garcia Fernandez (stage name Angelslang) is claiming that Jagger and Richards “misappropriated many of the recognizable and key protected elements” from his 2006 song “So Sorry” as well as his 2007 tune “Seed of God.”
How would members of the iconic band have heard those songs, which have less than 1,000 spins on Spotify? Fernandez claims he gave a demo CD to “an immediate family member” of Jagger.
“The immediate family member … confirmed receipt … to the plaintiff via e-mail, and expressed that the musical works of the plaintiff and its style was a sound The Rolling Stones would be interested in using,” Fernandez’s lawyers wrote in Friday’s complaint.
A copy of the alleged email from Jagger’s relative was not included in public filings.
Released at the peak of the COVID-19 shutdowns in April 2020, “Living in a Ghost Town” was the first original material released by the Stones since 2012. The song, a blues-rock tune with reggae influences accompanied by a COVID-themed video, reached No. 3 on the Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart in May 2020.
But Fernandez says the new song was created by borrowing key features from his songs, including the “vocal melodies, the chord progressions, the drum beat patterns, the harmonica parts, the electric bass line parts, the tempos, and other key signatures” from “So Sorry” and the “harmonic and chord progression and melody” from “Seed of God.”
“Defendants never paid plaintiff, nor secured the authorization for the use of ‘So Sorry’ and ‘Seed of God,’ his lawyers wrote.
A rep for The Rolling Stones did not immediately return a request for comment on Friday evening.
A year after Morris Day accused the Prince estate of trying to “rewrite history” by “taking my name away,” it appears that the ugly dispute over his band name has been worked out. But Day’s attorney tells Billboard that other key issues with the estate remain unresolved.
Last year’s outcry was prompted by a threat letter in which attorneys for the estate complained about Day’s efforts to own the trademark registration “Morris Day and The Time” — the name of the Prince-affiliated band he’s led for years. In it, they told him he had “no right” to use the name “in any form.”
That dispute now appears to be in the rearview mirror. In December, the federal trademark office formally published Day’s application for such a trademark registration. At that point, the Prince estate had 30 days to file an opposition case against him, but records show it did not do so.
The progress is perhaps unsurprising, given the change in the control of the Prince estate that has taken place in the year since Day’s complaints.
Last year’s threat letter came from Comerica, a court-appointed bank that administered the estate during a years-long legal battle. With that case finally closed, the Prince estate is now in the hands of its permanent stewards: industry bigwig Primary Wave on the one hand, and a group of heirs and advisors led by longtime Prince attorney Londell McMillan on the other in what amounts to a 50-50 split. And during last year’s fracas, both Primary Wave and McMillan voiced public support for Day.
Day and Prince were frequent collaborators in the early 1980s. Day was the lead singer of The Time, a group known for their high-octane funk; Prince wrote and produced much of their music under an alias. They toured together, and The Time appeared prominently as Prince’s rival band in the 1984 film Purple Rain. In a 1990 interview, Prince said The Time was “the only band I’ve ever been afraid of.”
In December 2021, attorneys for the estate sent a letter to Day over the trademark registration on “Morris Day and The Time,” a name he had continued to use on tours for decades. They warned him that it violated a 1982 written agreement in which Day allegedly agreed that Prince’s company would retain all rights to the band’s name. Unless Day reached a deal with the estate, the attorneys said they would file a formal case against him at the federal trademark office.
A few months later, Day spoke out publicly about the dispute, saying he had “spent 40 years of my life” building the name and that Prince had had “no problem” with him using it. “Now that Prince is no longer with us, suddenly, the people who control his multi million dollar estate want to rewrite history by taking my name away from me, thus impacting how I feed my family,” Day wrote in a social media post.
Day’s post quickly sparked outrage against Comerica. Former Prince bassist Nik West took to Instagram to complain: “I don’t see how ‘randoms’ can tell you this! Morris Day and the Time forever … we ALL know what time it is!” Primary Wave, which at that point was not yet in control of the estate, quickly joined the chorus of critics, telling Comerica to “do the right thing here.”
Now, a year later, Day’s trademark application is advancing, and his attorney Richard Jefferson tells Billboard that he and his client are optimistic that “things will be amicable moving forward.” But despite the headway on the “Time” name, Jefferson says they’re still working to resolve broader issues with the Prince estate.
“All I can say at this point is that we are making progress,” he said in an email. “The trademark is only one of a few issues at play.”
Case in point: Public records show that Day is also currently seeking to regain his ownership rights to two of The Time’s biggest songs using copyright law’s so-called termination right — a provision that allows creators to win back control of works that they sold away decades earlier.
In June, Day’s attorneys submitted formal notice that he planned to terminate the estate’s control over his songwriting stakes in “Jungle Love,” which hit No. 20 on the Billboard Hot 100, and “The Bird,” which reached No. 36 on the chart. Both songs also appeared prominently in Purple Rain.
If the termination process is completed, Day would recover a 50% share of the “Jungle Love” composition and a 33 percent stake in “The Bird” composition, according to the filings. The remaining shares of those songs, originally owned by Prince, would still be owned by the estate. But in practice, such filings are often simply a starting point, leading to a renegotiation of rights deals rather than an outright termination.
Representatives for both halves of the Prince estate did not return requests for comment.
TikTok is facing a slew of class action lawsuits alleging it tracks and harvests troves of personal information on users through its in-app browser.
In the most recent suit filed on Wednesday, users allege TikTok has “secretly amassed massive amounts of highly invasive information and data by tracking their activities on third-party websites.” At least a dozen class actions have been filed since November alleging violations of the federal wiretap act, among other claims.
TikTok remains under fire by the government due to concerns that data it collects on American users can be leveraged by the Chinese government to advance its interests. The company could, for example, be forced to tweak its algorithm to boost content that undermines U.S. democratic institutions or muffles criticism of China and its allies, according to lawmakers. A bipartisan bill backed by the White House was introduced on Tuesday that would establish a unified process for reviewing and addressing technology that could be subject to foreign influence. Under the measure, Chinese parent company ByteDance could be forced to sell TikTok or the platform could be completely banned, though that would face significant hurdles.
The first suit, known as Recht v. TikTok, was filed in November. It was based on a report from Felix Krause, a software researcher who found that the company injects lines of code that commands the platform to copy user activity on external websites. Of the seven popular apps he tested — including Instagram, Snapchat, Amazon — he found that only TikTok monitored keystrokes.
The named plaintiff in the complaint, California resident Austin Recht, says he clicked on an ad to a third-party website, where he bought merchandise after he entered private data that included his credit card information. Tiktok “surreptitiously collected data associated” with his activity on the third-party site accessed through the platform’s in-app browser, according to the complaint.
The class actions detail how TikTok intercepts and harvests data. The in-app browser inserts code into the websites visited by users with the purpose of tracking “every detail about [their] activity,” Recht claims.
“In the case of online purchase transactions, this would include all of the details of the purchase, the name of the purchaser, their address, telephone number, credit card or bank information, usernames, passwords, dates of birth,” reads the complaint filed in California federal court.
The data isn’t limited to purchase information and extends to private information about users’ health, the suit alleges. When users click on a link to Planned Parenthood on TikTok, for example, their activity on the site is tracked and harvested. This could identify users looking for abortion services or those looking for information about gender identity, according to the suit.
TikTok has faced legal action for illegally harvesting user data. In 2020, it was sued for alleged violations of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, a state statute that prohibits private companies from collecting users biometric identifiers without first obtaining consent. It settled the litigation for $92 million.
In response to suits alleging violations of the Federal Wiretap Act, Tiktok has said that the purported class members are covered under the settlement for those who sued for violations of the Illinois privacy law because it “addressed all user data collected through the app.”
Though the plaintiffs in the suit don’t allege any injury, the Federal Wiretap Act doesn’t require proof of actual harm to recover monetary damages. The law prohibits the intentional interception of communications, which includes personal information.
Some of the suits also allege violations of state invasion of privacy and competition laws. A hearing has been set for March 30 on whether the litigation should be consolidated.
In California, TikTok could face massive damages if there’s a data leak. Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, companies that mishandle personal data face statutory damages ranging from $100 to $750 for each consumer per incident.
TikTok didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
This article originally appeared on THR.com.
Jury deliberations began Wednesday (March 8) in the trial of three men accused of murdering rising rap star XXXTentacion during a 2018 robbery outside a Florida motorcycle shop after the alleged gunman’s attorney argued that DNA evidence proves his client and another man are innocent.
Attorney Joseph Kimok gave the final defense closing argument in the trial of three men accused of first-degree murder, telling jurors that while the artist struggled with his killers before being shot and DNA was found on the body and on a stolen necklace, it wasn’t from his client, 28-year-old Michael Boatwright. Nor was it from accused second gunman Trayvon Newsome, 24, or accused getaway driver and ringleader Dedrick Williams, 26.
“Whoever (XXXTentacion) struggled with is not in this courtroom,” Kimok told jurors as the four-week trial neared its conclusion. “The DNA proves that someone not named Michael Boatwright or Trayvon Newsome participated in this murder.”
A fourth man, Robert Allen, pleaded guilty last year to second-degree murder and testified against his former friends. Attorneys for all three men say he is lying about their clients’ involvement in the slaying and robbery, which netted $50,000. They also say Broward County sheriff’s detectives botched the investigation, failing to consider other possible suspects including Canadian rap star Drake, with whom XXXTentacion had an online feud.
Lead prosecutor Pascale Achille in her rebuttal argument Wednesday admitted that Allen is not a perfect witness, that he has previous felony convictions, but co-conspirators in murders rarely are.
“Plans hatched in hell do not have angels for witnesses,” she said.
Achille said that while detectives never found the guns, masks and money, only Williams was arrested within days of the shooting, giving the others time to hide any evidence. She said the lack of DNA evidence linking the defendants to the killing is irrelevant — that fact does not exclude them. She said much more importantly, cellphone data shows the defendants were together near the motorcycle shop at the time of the slaying and that Bluetooth data puts them in the SUV used by the shooters at that same time.
During her primary closing argument Tuesday, Achille played surveillance video from the motorcycle shop and elsewhere that she says backs up Allen’s testimony. She also played cellphone videos the defendants allegedly took hours after the killing that showed them smiling and dancing as they flashed handfuls of $100 bills.
Boatwright, Williams and Newsome all face mandatory life sentences if convicted. Prosecutors did not seek the death penalty. While the three are being tried together, the jury has to decide separately on each and could convict just one or two. The jurors deliberated for about an hour Wednesday before adjourning. They will resume Thursday.
XXXTentacion, whose real name was Jahseh Onfroy, had just left Riva Motorsports in suburban Fort Lauderdale on June 18, 2018, with a friend when his BMW was blocked by an SUV that swerved in front.
Surveillance video showed that two masked gunmen emerged and confronted the 20-year-old rapper at the driver’s window, and one shot him repeatedly after a 45-second struggle. They then grabbed a Louis Vuitton bag containing the $50,000, which XXXTentacion had just withdrawn from the bank. They then got back into the SUV and sped away. The friend was not harmed.
Prosecutors say the three defendants and Allen set out that day to commit robberies and went to the motorcycle shop to buy Williams a mask. There they spotted the rapper and decided to make him their target.
Prosecutors say Allen and Williams went inside the motorcycle shop to confirm it was him. They then went back to the SUV they had rented, waited for XXXTentacion to emerge and ambushed him, according to prosecutors.
The rapper was a platinum-selling rising star who tackled issues including prejudice and depression in his songs. He also drew criticism over bad behavior and multiple arrests, including charges that he severely beat and abused his girlfriend.
The license of a Rochester, New York, concert venue was revoked Wednesday (March 8) while authorities investigate the circumstances of a stampede after a rap concert that left two women dead and injured several other concertgoers.
“It is one step we can immediately take to ensure that the events of Sunday night are not repeated,” Police Chief David M. Smith said at a news conference. He said he denied the Main Street Armory’s application to renew its one-year entertainment license after the venue’s owner did not attend a scheduled meeting with police and other city officials.
Rhondesia Belton, 33, of Buffalo and Brandy Miller, 35, of Rochester were fatally injured when audience members surged dangerously toward the exits following a Sunday evening performance by Memphis, Tennessee, rap stars GloRilla and Finesse2tymes. Police on Monday said the stampede may have been triggered by unfounded fears of gunfire. But police found no immediate evidence of gunshots.
One woman remained hospitalized in critical condition Wednesday.
Smith said the city planned to meet with the venue’s owner Wednesday to ask him to choose between voluntarily halting events or having the pending renewal of the entertainment license denied. When the owner did not attend, the chief signed an order prohibiting the armory from hosting “any public entertainment, which includes concerts, amplified music, and athletic events or games, including volleyball or cheerleading.”
There was no response to an email requesting comment sent to the Main Street Armory.
“Your contracted event security guards were unable to control the crowd as they were running, which in turn caused a human stampede,” according to the city’s letter to Scott Donaldson, which said he had violated a licensing requirement to maintain order at the site.
The city’s deputy corporation counsel, Patrick Beath, said criminal and regulatory investigations are under way.
“In addition to the police investigation, the Rochester Fire Department and code enforcement teams are inspecting the building and reviewing photographic and video evidence of the concert to determine if there were any fire code or building code violations at the property,” Beath said at the news conference.
The fortress-like armory was built from 1905 to 1907 and was initially used by the U.S. Army. It hosted sporting events throughout the 20th century before being shut down for several years starting in the late 1990s, partly because it lacked a fire-suppression system at the time. It began hosting concerts and other events in 2005 after undergoing extensive renovations.
Smith said its main arena is meant to have a capacity of about 5,000 people.
“The bottom line is, lives were lost, and we need to take steps to make sure that no lives are lost in the future if this was indeed something that was preventable,” he said.
Fatal crowd surges at large events have turned deadly before, including one at a 2021 concert by rapper Travis Scott in which 10 people died.
Famed funk act Earth, Wind & Fire is suing a rival group that’s been performing under the name “Earth Wind & Fire Legacy Reunion,” calling them imposters who are infringing the band’s trademarks to “mislead the ticket-buying public.”
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday (March 7) in Florida federal court, the company that owns the band’s intellectual property argued that Legacy Reunion’s only claim to the name is a few “side musicians” who briefly played with Earth, Wind & Fire many years ago.
Despite that allegedly spurious link, the lawsuit says the rival group’s organizers “hatched a scheme to falsely imply in advertising that this new group was the real Earth, Wind & Fire.”
“Defendants did this to benefit from the commercial magnetism and immense goodwill the public has for plaintiff’s ‘Earth, Wind & Fire’ marks and logos, thereby misleading consumers and selling more tickets at higher prices,” the group’s lawyers wrote.
According to the lawsuit, the allegedly phony group is directly competing with the “real” Earth Wind & Fire, which has continued to tour since founder Maurice White died in 2016. Led by longtime members Philip Bailey, White’s brother Verdine and Ralph Johnson, the band operates under a license from Earth Wind & Fire IP LLC, a holding company owned by White’s sons.
In its lawsuit on Tuesday, attorneys for that company claimed that the organizers of Legacy Reunion (Substantial Music Group LLC and Stellar Communications, Inc.) have misled not only ticket buyers but resale websites like StubHub.
“The [Stubhub] ticket listing combines concerts by the real Earth, Wind & Fire with the band defendants’ promote, and the tickets offered for concerts by the band Defendants promote have nothing to do with the real Earth, Wind & Fire.”
Tribute acts – groups that exclusively cover the music of a particular band — are legally allowed to operate, and they often adopt names that allude to the original. But they can get into legal hot water if they make it appear that they are affiliated with the original. In 2021, ABBA filed a similar trademark lawsuit against a band that had been touring under the name ABBA Mania, calling it “parasitic.”
In the current case, Substantial Music Group allegedly used “Legacy Reunion” in listings (seemingly a reference to the former EWF members) but often in a separate font or in a different part of a logo. The group later allegedly changed the name to “Legacy Reunion of Earth Wind & Fire Alumni,” but the lawsuit claims the changes weren’t enough to avoid confusion.
Among other things, the lawsuit cited alleged examples of angry consumers who mistakenly bought tickets for the wrong band, including one that read, “This was not Earth Wind and Fire. NO Philip Bailey or Verdine White. It was just a band playing Earth Wind and Fire music. I purchased 3 tickets and I was very disappointed. It was truly false advertisement. I want my money back!!!!!”
In a statement to Billboard on Wednesday in response to the lawsuit, Substantial Music Group founder Richard Smith called the trademark complaint “disappointing.”
“It is sad that a greedy corporation has chosen to use trademark law to attempt to pass judgment on which historic members of Earth, Wind & Fire are worthy of being called alumni of the band,” Smith said. “I was personally a member of the band for five years and performed on two tours and one album. I’m proud to be an alumnus of the musical group and the corporation’s dismissiveness of my and others’ contributions Earth, Wind & Fire is hurtful. We will not be erased.”
Read the entire lawsuit here:
A Los Angeles judge has handed The Offspring a victory in its long legal battle with former drummer Ron Welty, who claimed he was owed millions more in profits from the veteran punk band’s $35 million catalog sale.
Welty, the band’s drummer from 1987 to 2003, claimed that lead singer Dexter Holland tried to “erase” his contributions to the Offspring’s golden era, including by failing to pay him his rightful cut of the sale of the band’s rights to Round Hill Music in 2015.
But Judge William F. Fahey largely rejected his accusations after a bench trial last fall, calling some of Welty’s allegations “completely illogical.” And in a final ruling on Monday, the judge sided with the Offspring on all remaining claims.
“Judgement is entered in favor of defendants Offspring Inc.,” the judge wrote. “Plaintiff Ron Welty shall take nothing.”
In a statement to Billboard on Wednesday, Welty’s attorney Jordanna G. Thigpen vowed to continue the fight: “In the few months I have been working with my deserving client and attempting to resolve this matter, it has become clear that the lower court was not the place where justice will be done. We are absolutely appealing, and look forward to higher authorities’ review of this court’s several decisions and its ultimate judgment.”
An attorney for the Offspring declined to comment on the decision.
Come Out and Pay
Welty joined the Offspring in 1987 and served as the band’s drummer across its heyday, including on its breakout 1994 album Smash and its 1998 peak with Americana, which reached No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and spent more than a year on the chart. When he left the band in 2003, no reasons were reported at the time.
But 17 years on, Welty filed a sweeping lawsuit in September 2020, claiming Holland and the other members had “forced him out of the band without cause” despite his “significant contributions to The Offspring’s success.” His lawyers claimed he was owed millions of dollars, and that the band was trying to “erase Mr. Welty and his achievements from the band’s history.”
“This lawsuit seeks, among other things, redress for The Offspring’s failure to pay Mr. Welty his rightful share of the band’s proceeds and a prohibition against their ongoing efforts to harm Mr. Welty, his legacy with the band, and his ongoing career,” his attorneys wrote at the time.
In particular, Welty’s lawsuit challenged the 2015 sale of the band’s music to Round Hill, which saw the company pay a reported $35 million for both the recorded masters for six studio albums and a greatest hits album, as well as the band’s music publishing rights covering its entire career.
But as revealed in later court filings, that deal was really structured as two separate deals: one $20 million payment split among the band’s key performers for the rights to the recorded masters, and another $15 million paid directly to Holland for the publishing rights, which he had retained exclusively.
In his lawsuit, Welty claimed he had not only been underpaid for his portion of the recordings, but that he was owed a portion of the $15 million Holland had earned from sale of his publishing rights.
But at a bench trial held in October, the other members of the Offspring’s best-known lineup testified that structure of the deal was fair. Both Kevin “Noodles” Wasserman and Gregory “Greg K.” Kriesel told the judge that Holland had written all of the band’s music, thus had rightly retained all publishing rights.
In a written decision in January citing that testimony, Judge Fahey ruled that the deal had been “structured in accordance with industry standards” and that Welty had failed to prove that he was entitled to a cut of Holland’s $15 million.
“It is hard even to envision a reason why these two other band members would agree to such a structure unless they believed that Holland was the creator and owner of the music compositions,” the judge wrote at the time.
“To adopt Welty’s theory would require this court to conclude that Wasserman and Kreisel knowingly walked away from a share of the additional $15 million … as part of some scheme to deprive Welty of additional compensation,” Judge Fahey wrote. “Such a conclusion is completely illogical as well as unsupported.”
The January ruling also rejected Welty’s separate accusations that he was owed hundreds of thousands in unpaid royalties.
Following that decision, other issues in the case remained technically unresolved, and the case might have proceeded to another trial at some point in the future. But in Monday’s decision, Judge Fahey made clear that his January decision had effectively ended the case and that “no issues remained to be tried.” All of Welty’s remaining claims against the band were “premised on the same allegations and present the same factual and legal issues on which the court already ruled in defendants’ favor,” he wrote.
This is The Legal Beat, a weekly newsletter about music law from Billboard Pro, offering you a one-stop cheat sheet of big new cases, important rulings and all the fun stuff in between.
This week: A deep-dive into the messy – and litigious – situation inside the iconic 80s rock band Journey; an update on YNW Melly’s death-penalty case at the Florida Supreme Court; a sudden dismissal of a copyright lawsuit against Benny Blanco, Ed Sheeran and others; and much more.
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THE BIG STORY: Don’t Stop Litigatin’
If you read one thing this week, make it Steve Knopper’s long Billboard story about the simmering problems inside Journey — an epic tale of internal dysfunction among members of an iconic band that’s still printing money decades after its “Don’t Stop Believing” heyday.
The story has it all: dueling security guards in green rooms; a multi-million-dollar pay-per-view wedding; a trail of fired managers and staffers; and an absolute all-timer quote: “This is Neal. I am fucking your wife.” But above all else, it has lawsuits — ranging from divorce to defamation to intellectual property to assault.
Sure, there’s the current battle between lead guitarist Neal Schon and keyboardist Jonathan Cain over a disputed American Express card. But there’s also the lawsuit filed against Live Nation over an alleged assault on Schon’s wife, a case alleging a “coup” by former bandmates Steve Smith and bassist Ross Valory, a trademark dispute with former frontman Steve Perry and much more.
For the full breakdown of the crisis inside Journey, go read the entire story here.
Other top stories this week…
DEATH PENALTY DISPUTE – Prosecutors urged the Florida Supreme Court to reject an appeal by YNW Melly from a ruling last year that said he could face the death penalty if convicted at an upcoming murder trial. The rapper says the state forfeited the right to seek the death penalty by failing to give proper notice, but prosecutors say he “suffered no harm.”
MARILYN MANSON UPDATE – A week after one of Marilyn Manson’s sexual assault accusers recanted her allegations, a judge ruled that the sudden reversal couldn’t be used as evidence in Manson’s defamation lawsuit against his ex-fiance Evan Rachel Wood. The move came after Wood’s lawyers argued the “eleventh hour” revelation was just a “bad-faith” effort to save Manson’s case.
COPYRIGHT CASE CLOSED – Two songwriters who sued Benny Blanco, Halsey, Khalid and Ed Sheeran for copyright infringement over their 2018 hit “Eastside” suddenly dropped the lawsuit. The accusers told Billboard that they decided that continuing the case would have been “too costly, challenging, and risky for us”; but Blanco’s lawyer said the accusations were “baseless” and “never should have been made” in the first place.
PODCAST POT CLASH – Chris “Kit” Gray, the president and co-founder of PodcastOne, was hit with a lawsuit claiming he fired his executive assistant because she refused to ship cannabis products from California (where they’re legal) to his home in Florida (where they aren’t).
TRAVIS SCOTT’S NIGHTCLUB SCUFFLE – Police in New York sought to question rapper Travis Scott after he was accused of assaulting a sound engineer and causing $12,000 worth of damage to sound equipment at Manhattan nightclub Nebula. His reps called it “a misunderstanding being blown out of proportion” and stressed that no charges had been filed. Scott is expected to sit for questioning this week.
