George Clinton’s longtime nemesis Armen Boladian and his affiliates sparked a $100 million copyright lawsuit outside Harlem’s iconic Apollo Theatre, vowing to take back his musical legacy and protect his family’s financial future.
On the side of the renowned civil rights lawyer Ben Crump, the Congress-Fincadian founder accused Boladian and his company, Bridgeport Music and others of fraudulently seizing nearly 90% of the copyrights of its legendary music catalog. The lawsuit was formally filed in the Florida District Court on Tuesday (March 11), accusing the entities of engaging in deceptive practices, copyright infringement, breach of fiduciary obligations and total fraud.
During a hot press conference, Clinton didn’t speak.
“These songs we’re talking about are my history,” Clinton began. “I have to fight for them; I have to make sure I’ve not done all of this in my life, but have family here, not get what they’ve produced, their inheritance. We don’t have the opportunity to pass 40 acres and mu children to our family. We don’t have the copyright to the songs. So I’m here with Ben and partners to make sure Armen doesn’t get the work we’ve worked so hard.”
The legendary funk pioneer accused the Bollards of making documents between 1982 and 1985 to give themselves additional rights to Clinton’s work.
The lawsuit also claimed that the Borards deliberately put Clinton’s due royalties into practice by adding pseudonyms and pseudonyms to the copyright registration and deducted millions of dollars owed to Clinton without his approval and planned an unauthorized deal with a third-party record company.
George Clinton urged artists to remain alert, declaring: “I will continue to tell the truth and fight the power that separates so many songwriters from music. I encourage all my artists to investigate, interrogate, litigate, liberate, reveal. If we are not right, they win and I refuse to let them win.”
He added: “It’s about my family and other traditional artists’ families, and we are able to give our families a generational basis from our intellectual property.”
This is not the first clash between Clinton and the Bollards. Back in 2001, the Brads filed a series of lawsuits against Clinton’s iconic track, but Clinton claimed he was excluded from making any profit.
When the Florida court stood with the Bollards, Clinton lost the copyright dispute that same year, awarding the song Clinton from 1976-1983.
However, in 2021, Clinton won the defamation lawsuit against Clinton for allegations in his autobiography about deceptive business strategies.
The Bollards legal team quickly dismissed Clinton’s latest allegations, marking the lawsuit as beneficial, and highlighting that Clinton’s previous court failed with similar claims.
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