Judiciary Report - Copyright Cases

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While the Isley's got a reasonable sum for the apparent infringement of their copyrighted music by Bolton, Art Buchwald was completely shafted. He got $1,000,000 in a case where it was established the Defendants committed willful copyright infringement and went on to unlawfully make roughly $500,000,000 off his script "King for a Day" that they renamed "Coming to America." Yea, I’m sure that title rang a bell with many of you.

If it wasn’t for Buchwald, what is now a classic, “Coming To America,” wouldn’t be in existence today, as it was stolen from his script and made from it with very little compensation to him, due to the cock and bull story the studio’s lawyers fed the Court about their mysterious losses from a film that was a huge hit, grossing way more than it cost to make. That movie is still making money to this day in cable and DVD rights.

Call it creative studio accounting. However, there have been books made that addressed what the studio's lawyers did in Court in that fateful lawsuit, namely “How The Movie Wars Were Won.” Said book contains a statement that not even the government and the IRS have been able to infiltrate the corrupt system some Hollywood studios utilize.

The book listed many cases brought against studios and how the artists who filed suit were blacklisted and slandered in Hollywood for daring to sue and speak out. It wrote of shady accounting practices that made huge hits like “Forrest Gump” allegedly appear like financial flops on paper to avoid paying writers (who author the scripts).

The sad and disturbing theme you get from it and other books like it is that people constantly steal copyrighted works and distribute certain major film studios' legal defense work among all the big law firms, so that a person whose copyrights were violated by them or a writer who was defrauded out of royalties that seeks to sue, can’t find a decent lawyer to take the case (conflict of interest).

The article said most law firms are on the studios’ payrolls. That is terrible. It is clear that the motto at some studios and record labels is it is more profitable to break the law and steal copyrights, then worry about the legal consequences later.

These studios make a very healthy profit from stealing copyrighted works, which is illegal. But it is why some of these major studios, major record labels and major artists like Madonna have no fear of the law, the U.S. government or the United Nations - because they know the millions, and sometimes billions they stand to make from breaking the law in stealing copyrighted works, is exponentially greater than the menial sum they'll have to pay in legal fees to get a case tossed and in some cases pay a menial sum far less than the violated works' value for a settlement.

The dollar amount pales in comparison. They know they will turn a huge profit from this internationally illegal activity, so they have no qualms about doing it.

But this is how their little system works. If the victim of their theft gets a lawyer actually brave enough to sue the blacklisting-career-sabotaging-media monopolizing Warner Bros or the Michael Eisner desecrated Disney (no wonder Roy Disney jr. went after him – was he raised by wolves), they pull every trick in the book in court and or move for a summary judgment under dubious premises and get the cases dismissed. End of story. Then go back to the criminal copyright infringing conduct. The court dockets reflect this clear pattern.

They spend little in legal fees on these cases, write it off as a business expense, feed the Court a load of rubbish, the case gets tossed and they walk out the court room confident in their frequently utilized, criminal profit making scheme – also known as racketeering (US RICO laws), copyright infringement and willful violations of United Nations laws. It's no accident and it's always the same exact people getting sued for and accused of this very thing.

They see the equation as such. Spend at worst $50,000 in legal fees, make $700,000,000 – $1,000,000,000 off of brilliant copyrighted works that were willfully and unlawfully stolen and infringed – turn a huge profit, less a few small legal fees.

ame vs. the Facts

All too often, judges look at fame and not the facts. During the "Coming To America" plagiarism and copyright infringement case, the judge fawningly stated the case was nothing against Eddie, who is a great comedian in his estimation.

But the fact remains, the case was about Eddie too, who got writer's credit for something that was willfully stolen from Art Buchwald.

And Murphy was later sued again a few years later for the very same charge of Copyright Infringement in allegedly stealing "The Nutty Professor." The case was settled out of court in the Plaintiff's favor.

My point, when judges fawn over celebrities, it doesn't exactly discourage misconduct. As you can see, it happened again. Many of the same celebrities end up getting sued multiple times for this misconduct because the legal system all too often deliberately lets them off the hook - leaving the watching world appalled.

Coincidentally, as mentioned above, Bert Fields was the lawyer defending the infringements in that shameful case, when the studio lied in court that they did not make a profit from a film that cost about 30 million dollars to make and grossed $288,752,301 at the Box Office and at least another $150,000,000 dollars in cable, TV, video then DVD rights.