Petteri Pyyny
4 Jun 2003 14:45
World's third largest record label, British EMI, has sued German media giant Bertelsmann, the owner of world's fifth largest record label BMG. The suit follows the similiar lawsuit filed earlier this year by group of independent music publishers and later by world's largest record label, UMG (owned by French Vivendi).
The legal fight that includes all the parties mentioned, is seeking for more than $17 billion from Bertelsmann. UMG, BMG and the independent publishers have filed the lawsuit because they consider that Bertelsmann was deeply involved with large-scale copyright infringements by investing over $100M to now-defunct Napster, the mother of all P2P tools.
EMI's suit was filed, just like UMG's was, in District Court in New York. Previously these two record labels (UMG and EMI) have already sued the original Napster's investors, the venture capitalist company Hummer Winblad Venture Partners for same reasons that they're now suing Bertelsmann.
Remaining two of the Big Five record labels, Japanese Sony and the only major American label owner AOL TimeWarner, haven't commented whether they will be joining the lawsuit party in near future.
Source: Reuters