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George Clinton Battles Law Firm over Copyrights

BY Tom Huddleston Jr.
March 29, 2013

In Nov. 2012, Seattle U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik had ruled that 'Godfather of Funk' George Clinton must cede the copyrights to the master recordings of four Fundadelic albums released by Warner Bros. between 1976 and 1981 ' Hardcore Jollies, One Nation Under a Groove, Uncle Jam Wants You and The Electric Spanking of War Babies ' to Seattle-based Hendricks & Lewis to make good on more than $1.5 million in unpaid legal fees. Hendricks & Lewis v. Clinton, C12-0841 (W.D.Wash. 2012). Hendricks & Lewis, which is being represented in its efforts to collect the unpaid tab by Davis Wright Tremaine, racked up at least some of those bills helping the 1997 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee to win control of those copyrights in the first place.

The War Has Begun

Clinton's current effort to assert ownership of his creations began 14 years ago when he sued Bridgeport Music Inc., alleging that his signature had been forged on documents assigning the rights to more than 170 songs he wrote between 1976 and 1983 ' including some of his best-known compositions ' to the Southfield, MI'based publisher and its president, Armen Boladian. In 2001, a federal district court judge in Florida ruled against Clinton and awarded Bridgeport those rights. The company immediately moved to cash in on Clinton's popularity with a new generation of recording artists who had leaned heavily on snippets of his classics in making their own records.

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