Photo Credit: George Clinton by Raj Gupta / CC by 2.0
George Clinton has filed a $100 million lawsuit against his former business partner and Bridgeport Music, alleging copyright theft.
Funk musician George Clinton has filed a copyright lawsuit against former business partner, Armen Boladian, and his Bridgeport Music company. The suit, filed in Florida District Court on Tuesday, alleges that Boladian fraudulently obtained copyrights to approximately 90% of Clinton’s catalog.
According to Clinton’s lawsuit, Boladian and Bridgeport — as well as Westbound Records, Nine Records, Southfield Music, and Eastbound Records — unlawfully profit off the funk musician’s work. He held a press conference outside of the Apollo Theatre to announce the suit, alongside his attorney Ben Crump and fellow counsel. Clinton says he intends to reclaim ownership of his catalog to provide generational wealth to his family.
“These songs we’re talking about is my history,” said Clinton. “I have to fight for them; I have to make sure that I did not do all of this my whole life and have my family here, not get what’s due to them, what they inherit. We don’t have a chance to pass down 40 acres and mules to our families. We do not have the copyrights for the songs. So I’m here along with Ben and partners to make sure that Armen does not get what we worked so hard for.”
“I will continue to speak truth to power and to fight against the forces that have separated so many songwriters from their music,” Clinton continues. “I encourage all my fellow artists to investigate, interrogate, litigate, unseal, reveal. If we don’t get this right, then they win, and I refuse to let them win. This is about my family and the family of the other legacy artists and us being able to give generational wealth to our family from the intellectual property.”
Clinton’s lawsuit claims that his longtime business partner, Boladian, withheld millions of dollars in royalties and engaged in deceptive and fraudulent practices throughout the years. Allegedly, between 1982 and 1985, Boladian fabricated multiple versions of agreements, designating additional rights to his catalog, adding fake names and pseudonyms to copyright registrations to dilute royalty shares.
“This is just the latest in a series of lawsuits that Mr. Clinton has filed against Bridgeport and Armen Boladian over the last 30 years, raising the same exact issues,” said a statement from Boladian’s attorney, Richard Busch. “He has lost each and every time, including in the very courthouse in which he has filed this latest lawsuit. We will obviously, therefore, be moving to dismiss this lawsuit and will be seeking sanctions.”
Boladian has a history of litigious behavior over commercial use of Clinton’s music. He has filed hundreds of lawsuits in 2001 alone against musicians who sampled his work. Clinton’s lawsuit notes that he was not included as a plaintiff in any of those lawsuits, and did not receive any of the millions Boladian was awarded.
Clinton also lost a copyright lawsuit to Boladian in 2001 after a Florida judge ruled that music written from 1976 to 1983 belongs to Bridgeport Music. But that was only the beginning of their legal warfare. Boladian lost a defamation suit against Clinton in 2021, over claims made in the latter’s 2014 autobiography, “Brothas Be, Yo Like George, Ain’t That Funkin’ Kinda Hard On You?: A Memoir.” The book claims that Boladian had fabricated documents, fraudulently backdated and altered contracts, and “robbed” Clinton of his songs.
Content shared from www.digitalmusicnews.com.