Metropolitan News-Enterprise
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Page 3
Appeals Court Revives Suit Over Recordings ofAlvin and theChipmunks
By STEVEN M. ELLIS,Staff Writer
This districts Court ofAppeal yesterday revived a dispute over who can license recordings ofAlvin and the Chipmunks foruse as background music in television or feature films.
Div. Seven, in anunpublished opinion, reversed a trial courts ruling that a 1968 agreement withthe groups creator, Ross Bagdasarian Sr.who used the name David Seville inconnection with the Chipmunks propertiesgave those rights to Capitol Records.
Bagdasarian, who died in1972 at the age of 52, signed the agreement with Capitols predecessor ininterest, Liberty Records, when he sold the company master recordingsencompassing 112 musical selections in exchange for $200,000.
The deal gaveLiberty ownership of therecordings plus an unlimited right to exploit them for the purpose ofmanufacture and distribution
of reproductions or records.
Bagdasarians son, RossBagdasarian Jr., a non-practicing attorney who heads Bagdasarian Productionsand who obtained his fathers rights to the animated characters and theirmusic, sued Capitol Records in 2008. He claimed that Capitols decades-longhistory of licensing rights to the music to third parties in industries otherthan the phonograph record industrysuch as television, film andmerchandisingwas unauthorized and exceeded the agreements scope.
Recordings byAlvin and the Chipmunks haveappeared in motion pictures such as Rocky IV, Donnie Brasco andAlmost Famous, and in television programs including The Sopranos and Providence. Bagdasarian and hiswife, Janice Karman, revived the Chipmunks in the 1980s, writing and producingtelevision shows and songs for which they provided vocals.
Capitol argued that the1968 agreement gave it the right to exploit the recordings in any manner and inconnection with any industry it saw fit, and that use of them as backgroundmusic was an authorized use even if the rights were limited to reproduction ofsound in the phonographic record field because the field included electronicmedia and merchandise sold in record stores. It also contended that Bagdasarianwaited too long to bring his claims.
Bagdasarian contendedthat his delay was based on a mistaken understanding of the rights his fathersold. He said the misunderstanding was only corrected in 2007, after TwentiethCentury Fox expressed interest in producing a movie using artwork for theoriginal characters from the 1950s and 1960s and he obtained a copy of the 1968agreement.
Los Angeles SuperiorCourt Judge Teresa Sanchez-Gordon, after allowing both sides to presentextrinsic evidence, ruled that Capitol had the right to grant master-uselicenses for the recordings for soundtracks for film, television and withproducts such as toys and that Bagdasarian had no such rights.
But the Court of Appealdisagreed with that conclusion in an opinion by Presiding Justice Dennis M.Perluss.
In plain language nototherwise explained by any material extrinsic evidence,the 1968 agreementconveyed to Capitols predecessor physical ownership of certain masterrecordings identified in that agreement, as well as an unlimited right toexploit those master recordings for the purpose of manufacture anddistribution
of reproductions or records as those terms are defined in the agreement,he wrote.
That specified purpose,as broad as it may be, does not include licensing the recordings for use asbackground music in television or feature films, a use that involves neitherthe manufacture nor the distribution of records or reproductions, evenunder the most expansive interpretation of the 1968 agreement.
Perluss noted, however,that a 1993 request by Bagdasarian to Capitol for information regardingownership of the Chipmunks Witch Doctor song might have given him constructiveknowledge of his claims, giving rise to a possible defense under the statute oflimitations or the doctrine of laches.
Justices Fred Woods andLaurie D. Zelon joined Perluss in his opinion.
Bagdasarian wasrepresented on appeal by Rex S. Heinke and Christopher Blanchard of Akin GumpStrauss Hauer & Feld, while Capitol was represented by Peter I. Ostroff,Bradley H. Ellis and Michelle B. Goodman of Sidley Austin.
The case isBagdasarianProductions, LLC v. Capitol Records, Inc., B217960.
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