Stan Lee vs. Stan Lee Media goes bicoastal

By Eriq Gardner

Suing for lots of money—let's say $750 million—gets a ton of press attention. Especially when the defendant happens to be a comic book legend like Stan Lee, the geek genius behind Spider-Man, X-Men, Iron Man, the Hulk and the Fantastic Four.

So we weren't surprised to see so many news reports that shareholders of Stan Lee Media were suing Stan Lee for $750 million to recover their claimed share of profits from Lee's Marvel-related characters.

But often lawsuits serve as nothing more than a formally-written press release. Lee and his former company are already waging war in California court, and have been for many years, fussing over ownership of many properties created by Lee.

So what's different about this latest lawsuit? The jurisdiction, for starters. The New York case also expands Marvel's role in the mess and seeks the huge financial redemption for lost profits, whereas the California litigation focuses on control of assets. And the New York lawsuit includes a new class of plaintiffs, those purporting to represent shareholders in Stan Lee Media.

According to one of our sources, the new plaintiffs in New York got frustrated waiting for action in the California litigation. They put the wheels in motion for their $750 million lawsuit before learning that the California District Court made an important order denying Lee's claims that he properly transferred assets belonging to Stan Lee Media Inc.  Afterwards, Stan Lee Media put out a press release trumpeting the California decision and claiming that it would help them recover the money.

Stan Lee's side responded with its own press release doubting the legitimacy of these "plaintiffs." 

"On January 27th a press release issued by persons falsely claiming to speak on behalf of Stan Lee Media Inc falsely presented the details of a California court truling...Despite assertions by certain 'plaintiffs' against Stan Lee in New York, San Lee, POW! Entertainment and QED Productions' interest in copyrights and trademarks owned by them may remain with POW!. QED, and Lee."

The press release continues, "The California ruling states that further proceedings will be necessary in this case."

By that, Lee means in California, where the real action is taking place. Unfortunately, a $750 million lawsuit may have overshadowed this fact.

Is PETA really barking mad about Super Bowl standards snub?

By Eriq Gardner

Pity the poor lawyer in the standards department of a television network. The job is rather thankless and when something offensive gets on the air, it's usually he or she who faces scorn from all sides.

Alonzo Wickers, a partner in the Los Angeles office of Davis Wright Tremaine who often conducts reviews for news and entertainment companies, told us a few years back that there's a great deal of misperception out there about the confrontational relationship between standards lawyers and network brass. “I’ve worked on 35 or 40 shows (including 'South Park')," he said, "And I can count on one hand the number of times where there’s been true conflict.” 

That might be true, but there's nothing quite as big as the Super Bowl to get people nervous. This year, NBC is charging $3 million per 30-second spot, and NBC Sports chairman Dick Ebersol says this year's ad sales would probably set a record.

But not all ads are getting past the standards lawyers. 

PETA says it was denied the opportunity to run a risqué spot showing lingerie models frolicking amid broccoli and pumpkins. On its website, the org released an e-mail sent by NBC Universal VP of Advertising Standards Victoria Morgan that suggested the group edit out "licking pumpkins," "touching her breast with her hand while eating broccoli," "rubbing pelvic region with pumpkin," "screwing herself with broccoli," and more. Here's the letter.

Frankly, we feel a little bit sorry for Morgan. She must deal with network liability in the post-"wardrobe malfunction" era, and as THR's James Hibberd points out, this very well could be a clever ruse by PETA to score publicity without actually having to spend $3 million on the spot. 

If the latter is the case, it wouldn't be the first time something like this happened. In fact, trademarks on the Super Bowl are protected rather strongly, and if there's one thing that the gameis famous for in the legal community, it's all sorts of envelope-pushing, lawyer-provoking "ambush marketing" campaigns by advertisers.

John Landis now going after 'Thriller' theater production

By Matthew Belloni

Last week we noted with mild nausea that Michael Jackson had been sued yet again, this time by director John Landis, who wants his 50% share of proceeds from the legendary "Thriller" music video and documentary.

Now Landis is targeting a planned musical theater production of "Thriller," seeking to stop Jackson and producer Nederlander from proceeding with a project that allegedly would infringe some of Landis's work on the video.

Here's the new "Thriller" complaint for declaratory relief.

Landis is claiming he owns at least 50% of the "separated rights" to the video and documentary, which he says includes the "dramatic rights" to make a musical. Jackson was required to get Landis's permission to do a deal with Nederlander, which he never did, according to the complaint.

The complaint alleges Jackson is getting in the ballpark of $400,000 from Nederlander, which seems low to us but admittedly we're not experts on musical theater rights deals.

POST UPDATED

Send cease-and-desist letter first, ask questions later

By Eriq Gardner

When a record company finds out that one of its bands has posted copyrighted material on a website, what does it do?

If Warner Music Group is the label, it apparently sends its own band a cease-and-desist letter. Or maybe someone in legal affairs just made a phone call. Nevertheless, when Death Cab for Cutie learned their label wasn't happy, they left fans a note at the band's website (pictured above) that read, "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by WMG."

After suffering a bit of heckling on social news site Reddit, the band then pulled the entire embedded video.

Nobody seems to be interested in good publicity these days. Copyright protectors rule the nest.

Take GateHouse Media as another example. 

The company wasn't pleased to learn that a New York Times subsidiary, boston.com, was featuring links in an RSS feed to a GateHouse-owned local blog. These links connected users directly to GateHouse's website but GateHouse didn't appreciate the traffic. Last December, GateHouse sued NYT for copyright infringement in a case watched by some legal observers as perhaps shedding light on the legality of a practice known as "RSS Scraping."

Everyone will need to wait for another case on the topic. Yesterday, the NYT announced the parties had settled the case. In the settlement agreement (here), the NYT agreed to remove the links.

Joe Francis vs. his lawyers: Who, dare we ask, has gone wilder?

By Eriq Gardner

It's been awhile since we checked in on "the Bobs," the pair of Milwaukee attorneys who called themselves "legal mercenaries" to Portfolio magazine before hopping on a plane to hit it big in Hollywood. Last year, we wondered whether anybody in the entertainment community would bother putting Robert Bernhoft and Robert Barnes on their lunch schedule. 

Well, the Los Angeles Daily Journal today prints a front-page update on the Bobs in which disgruntled client Joe Francis of "Girls Gone Wild" fame calls them "swindlers," saying "The only reason they wanted me was to mooch off me and open up an L.A. office...The Bernhofts are the Paris Hilton of lawyers — just to be famous, not to do anything."

Them's fighting words. Bernhoft responded swiftly to the article, invoking the dreaded D-word in a statement to LA Observed. "Today’s Los Angeles Daily Journal story on Bernhoft Law’s representation of Joe Francis is ambush journalism at its worst. It turns a false premise – that Joe Francis allegedly dismissed Bernhoft Law for poor performance in Francis' tax case – into a lazy, false, and defamatory hit job."

True, THR, Esq. favorite Francis sees a lot of conspiracies in this world. And if Francis did ditch the Bobs, it wouldn't be the first time they've been let go without really being fired. After the two got Wesley Snipes acquitted on the major charges in the actor's tax evasion case, they were allegedly dismissed because they said they didn't want to be held responsible for Snipes' maximum prison term sentence on the misdemeanor counts.

 

But the real question here is, who cares? We're surprised the DJ gave Francis, not exactly a reputable critic of legal service providers, a venue to trash his attorneys. Lots of starry-eyed lawyers set up shop in LA hoping to land celebrity clients. And plenty of those lawyers end up getting kicked to the curb by those same celebrities, often for reasons that have little to do with the quality of the representation. 

 

That said, Joe Francis is a special breed. The Bobs probably should have known that when you take on a guy like Francis, you're probably going to end up as humiliated as the women in his videos. 

Univision and Televisa kiss and makeup...well, until the next episode

By Eriq Gardner

We weren't surprised to hear last week that Univision and Televisa settled a very heated row over their programming agreement. By forging a deal on Thursday, Univision will have access to Televisa's popular Spanish-language telenovelas through 2017, at which time the programming agreement ends.

So steam up the showers for these old lovers, right? No tan rápido.

Soon after the settlement hit the press, lawyers for both sides started spinning what happened.

Televisa lawyer Marshall Grossman was crowing about the settlement, which includes $65 million a year in free advertising for its commercial ventures, or $585 million over the remaining nine years of the contract. Univision also agreed to pay Televisa $25 million in cash, but that figure includes $21.5 million already paid under protest.

"When your adversary comes to you and offers everything you were suing for plus a half-billion dollars of free advertising, it doesn't matter whether it comes on the first or last day of trial, you take it," Grossman told THR. "The settlement is more than what we asked for in the litigation, other than the termination of the agreement." 

Grossman's view of the settlement wasn't taken too kindly within Univision's headquarters, where the free ad time was shrugged off as an insignificant concession already due to Televisa. "This was truly a mutually beneficial agreement and Mr. Grossman's valuation is grossly overstated and misleading," a Univision spokesperson responded on Friday. "The cash and EBITDA impact to Univision from the settlement is minimal."

John Keker of Keker & Van Nest, who represented Univision during the case, went even further. He issued his own press release, saying "They tried to collect huge royalties and didn't get them."

Elliot Peters, a partner of Keker, added, "They could have done this deal almost two years ago."

Well, it seems like both sides are happy enough, or reasonably unhappy,  which is how settlements happen. Unfortunately, dealmaking isn't as emotionally satisfying at butchering your opponent in court, leaving both sides to schoolyard taunting via press release. Whatever happened to letting your opponent think they won?

At least Univision and Televisa will have another opportunity to clash swords in court. In March, before the same judge, both sides will reconvene in a separate case to hash out the issue of Internet rights. Unless, of course, they settle before then.  

Congratulations, you're the 1000th person to sue Michael Jackson

By Eriq Gardner

Uugh. Forgive us, but news that Michael Jackson is being sued for failing to pay money due from a contract inspires a bit of nausea. The former pop superstar has been sued by royalty, veterinary hospitals, lawyers, "she's not my lover" Billy Jean, Wall Street, the family of somebody who died, Sotheby's auction house, and if we were offered a bet on whether Jackson will someday be sued by his former chimp Bubbles, we'd take the bait.

At what point does the litigation trail outweigh the hit records? Might the U.S. judicial system be better organized by classifying cases as "civil," "criminal," and "Michael Jackson"?

In the latest suit, the company that supplied the directing and co-writing services for John Landis for Jackson's legendary music video "Thriller," is suing for damages after the singer and his company, Optimum Productions, allegedly failed to account and pay net profits from the video and documentary.

Here's the complaint, filed yesterday by Miles Feldman at LA's Liner Yankelevitz.

Eloise in Paris (and a fight over paying Uma Thurman $4.5 million)

By Eriq Gardner

Anyone with a foot fetish (hello, Quentin Tarantino) and fashionistas jonesing for a fix of Project Runway might have been excited to see Christian Siriano dress Uma Thurman in the upcoming film adaptation of the children's classic "Eloise in Paris."

But as Heidi Klum would say, one day you're in and the next you're out.

The production company behind the "Eloise" adaptation is being sued for failure to make good on an agreement to pay the company that was supposed to pay Uma Thurman $4.5 million, plus 10 percent of "certain receipts" to star in the film.

Power lawyer Bert Fields filed the case yesterday on behalf of Karuna Dream, a New York-based company that was supposed to supply the acting services of Uma Thurman. According to the complaint, the defendants, U.K.-based production and distribution company Handmade Films and the company it set up called Eloise in Paris, LTD, "repudiated" the agreement in November.

Allegedly Handmade claimed at that time that the repudiation would only entitle Karuna to $1.5 million. If true, we have no idea why Handmade has broken from the agreement. Dressing Thurman as the governess of a young girl who goes to Paris for Fashion Week seems worth it to us.

Karuna says it responded by offering them the opportunity to withdraw their repudiation, allowing Thurman to proceed as scheduled.

On January 12, Handmade allegedly "further repudiated the Acting Agreement, this time, by denying the existence of any agreement for the services of Uma Thurman."

We're pretty sure that would tick off the lawyers for Karuna and Thurman, even if they weren't Bert Fields.

Karuna is asking for the $4.5 million promised to Thurman, plus $5 million more it could have expected to make from the 10 percent contingent commission, and punitive damages. The movie was scheduled to commence shooting on February 28, but no word yet on whether it is going forward. There seems to be more going on here than meets the eye.

Read the complaint here

John McCain's lawyers respond to Jackson Browne

By Eriq Gardner

In advance of a hearing to determine whether singer Jackson Browne's lawsuit against 2008 Republican presidential candidate John McCain will continue or be thrown out, both sides are posturing with legal briefs.

Earlier this month, attorneys for Browne filed opposition papers to McCain's motion to dismiss, arguing that copyright and rights-of-publicity protected Browne's hit song "Running on Empty" from being used in a campaign commercial. Yesterday, attorneys for McCain responded with two filings of their own, pointing to Browne's concessions on the nature of the dispute as a reason why the court should dismiss the action.  

Here's a copy of the first motion, arguing that Browne's concession that McCain used a snippet of the song "as part of a political message" that "criticize[d] President-elect Obama's energy policy" is an acknowledgment of the political nature of the use. McCain's lawyers believe this to be important because it would factor largely into the court's fair use analysis. Previously, Browne pointed to case law that demonstrated not every use of copyrighted material in political speech to be fair.

The second motion is in support of a anti-SLAPP motion that seeks to punish Browne's alleged misuse of the judicial system to trample First Amendment speech. McCain's lawyers accuse Browne's camp of "ignoring all of the on-point cases" (their boldface, not ours), and says that since they've met the first prong of the state's anti-SLAPP statute — whether the considered speech is a protected one like a public policy message — the burden "shifts to Browne to prove there is a probability he will prevail on the merits of his claim."

Very interesting reading, and what a court decides next month could help determine how political campaigns use copyrighted music in the future.

Supreme Court has seen enough porn

By Eriq Gardner

Free speech activists got a victory today when the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously and without comment declined to review a lower court's decision that the Child Online Protection Act of 1998 was unconstitutional and couldn't be enforced. 

The law went onto the books during the Clinton Administration in an attempt to punish websites that published sexually explicit material without verifying that minors wouldn't be seeing it. Since then, the law has been road-blocked by the courts, including the Supreme Court. The justices previously affirmed a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit enjoining COPA's enforcement and issued two rulings in 2002 and 2004 also preventing COPA from being used.

The Department of Justice has relentlessly pushed to change the judicial branch's mind on COPA, but as the case of Max Hardcore showed, the government has other criminal tools to pursue alleged smut peddlers. Paul Little, aka Max Hardcore, was charged with using a computer server to sell obscene matter, and was sentenced to four years in prison. 

With the transfer of power in the executive branch, and the Supreme Court's refusal to reconsider COPA, prosecutors will probably back off being too aggressive on the war against hardcore porn online.