Court Rejects Former Bowie Manager’s Challenge of EMI / Capitol Records Copyright Victory
Pryor Cashman clients EMI Music, Inc., Capitol Records, LLC and Jones/Tintoretto Entertainment Co., LLC. have prevailed against David Bowie’s former manager Anthony Defries, who unsuccessfully sought to challenge a $9.35 million judgment stemming from a 2011 copyright and trademark infringement suit.
Defries, who is believed to be currently residing in South Africa, attempted to convince the same District Court judge who awarded the multimillion judgment against him that EMI, Capitol Records and Jones/Tintoretto failed to establish personal jurisdiction over him in their 2011 case.
In that action, the record companies brought suit against Defries and related entities for, among other things, willful copyright infringement, after he and his company, MainMan Ltd., sold copies of songs by music legends Bowie, Iggy Pop and John Mellencamp via iTunes, Spotify, Amazon and Napster, despite not owning distribution rights to the works. Defries had, in fact, sold what rights he did lawfully own in the artists’ master recordings to the record companies in the 1990s for several million dollars.
In December 2012, Judge P. Kevin Castel of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York found Defries liable for willful copyright infringement and ordered he pay the judgement, along with nearly two hundred thousand dollars for plaintiffs’ attorneys’ fees. Defries then attempted, unsuccessfully, to challenge Judge Castel’s ruling before the U.S. District Court for the Second Circuit.
Judge Castel Denies Defries’ Jurisdictional Challenge
Speaking with Law360 about the Court’s decision to deny Defries’ most recent motion, Donald Zakarin, Chair of Pryor Cashman’s Litigation Group and a member of the team that represented the record companies, remarked:
"Judge Castel issued a decision some years ago following an inquest awarding the plaintiffs a judgment for copyright infringement against Anthony Defries in the amount of some $9 million for his willful infringement of David Bowie musical compositions and recordings. We fully expected that Judge Castel would make short work of Mr. Defries’ rather belated attempt to challenge jurisdiction — an issue he also unsuccessfully raised years ago before Judge Castel awarded judgment against him — and are gratified that our expectations were borne out."
The case is Capitol Records LLC et al. v. Defries et al., 1:11-cv-06808.
The Pryor Cashman Team
EMI, Capitol Records and Jones/Tintoretto were represented by Pryor Cashman Litigation and Intellectual Property Partners Donald Zakarin, Ilene Farkas and Eric Fishman.
