Martin Shkreli in Legal Battle Over Wu-Tang Clan LP Copyrights

Disgraced pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli has filed a counter lawsuit against Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA in a battle for copyright ownership of Wu-Tang’s Once Upon a Time in Shaolin album, as per Rolling Stone.

Backstory:

• In 2015 Shkreli purchased the only copy of the album in existence for $1.5 million.

• As per Rolling Stone, Shkreli says the byzantine deal with RZA, born Robert Diggs, and producer Cilvaringz, AKA Tarik Azzougarh, was divided into tangible and intangible deliverables.

• The tangible element was a hard copy of the album; the intangible was an immediate 50% ownership of the record’s copyrights, with the remaining 50% to be transferred in 2103.

What happened next:

• Shkreli was convicted of securities fraud and conspiracy in 2017.

• Federal officials seized the album and sold it in 2021 to digital art collective PleasrDAO for $4 million, with proceeds going to victims of his crimes.

Copyright claim:

• Despite this, Shkreli claims he is still the rightful owner of 50% of the album’s current copyrights, and he wants the court to issue a declaratory judgment confirming this.

• He alleges that RZA and Cilvaringz falsely reclaimed and resold the copyrights without his knowledge during his criminal case.

• The alleged double-dipping concluded with PleasrDAO acquiring rights “to exploit the album under a purportedly improper ‘duplicate sale’,” as per Rolling Stone.

• Shkreli “invoked the alleged 2015 agreement after PleasrDAO sued him first,” accusing him of “improperly retaining copies of the album” after the court ordered its forfeiture.

• They cited concerns that he intends to release, or has already released, the music to the public.

• In January a federal judge permitted PleasrDAO’s civil case to go to trial, ruling that the album “could qualify as a trade secret unlawfully retained by Shkreli.”

• In his latest filing, Shkreli is seeking a ruling saying it is not a “protected trade secret.”

What they said:

• Steven Copper, lead lawyer for PleasrDAO (to Rolling Stone): “Mr. Shkreli’s approach throughout this case has been to distract and delay, with actions that the court has consistently and strongly rejected. These counterclaims will meet the same fate. They are untimely, non-cognizable, and oddly, claim that Mr. Shkreli retained rights to the album when he was under a court order to forfeit all of his rights in his criminal prosecution.”