Sony pay $5M in Logo dispute for Bat out of Hell
 

Sony Ordered to Pay $5M in Logo Dispute
8 hours ago

CLEVELAND (AP) — Sony Music must pay the founder of a small record company $5 million for failing to put his company's logo on reissues of Meat Loaf's "Bat Out of Hell" album, a federal appeals court ruled.

Steve Popovich, 65, who started Cleveland International Records in 1977 and soon afterward signed the chubby singer named Marvin Lee Aday, persuaded Epic Records to release the wildly successful album.

Epic was owned at the time by CBS. Sony, which bought out CBS Records, paid $6.7 million to Popovich and his former partners in 1998 to settle a lawsuit over royalties from the album.

The settlement required Sony to place the Cleveland International logo on future Meat Loaf albums but Sony did not add the logo to "Bat Out of Hell" for more than a year.

In a 2-1 decision Wednesday, a panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati upheld a federal jury's decision in 2005 awarding Popovich an extra $5 million in damages.

"I worked too hard for them and made them too much money to get robbed now, in the autumn of my life," he said.

Cleveland International's roster also includes singer/songwriter David Allan Coe and an array of polka artists including Grammy winners Brave Combo and the late Frankie Yankovic.

A call Thursday to Sony Music in New York was answered with a message that the offices were closed until Monday.

Sony has claimed that the logo omission was a mistake that later was corrected. In court documents, Sony also accused Popovich of trying to get money out of the company by trumping up the logo agreement.

"Bat Out of Hell," operatic in tone, but guitar rock through and through, has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide, according to court records.

Cleveland International and Steve Popovich believed in Bat Out Of Hell whenno one else did. This is a well deserved moral and legal victory for Steve after years of being shafted by the big corporates.

definitely

Now can someone be held accountable for all the "best ofs" that seem to come out every so often for Mr Loaf but have exactly the same tracklisting ie from blind before i stop, bad attitude,wttn and some of live around the world?

So in a way.... if it wouldnt have been for Steve Popovich... all this might not even have been here ;)

For a while Steve even wrote a blogspot about this lawsuit!
No use to look for it anymore though; it got deleted at a certain point, but it definately showed how he felt about it.......

You only need look through your back issues of RVM to see the interview he gave back in 2006 to see some of his thoughts on the matter. I'd guess that removing the blog is part of the settlement deal...

Something like that crossed my mind too...

I love those best of stuff. Some songs are remixed (Like on the rock'n roll hero one) and sound great. BUt i dont think they are alowed to use BOOH material.

Well, I would guess that they use the 'international' versions of the "Bad Attitude" tracks for those compilations. The US version of that album has a different mix for some of the tracks. I highly doubt they would make that kind of effort for a cheap compilation.

Sony does that all the time, particularly to artists who only recorded one or two albums for them or one of their imprints - Alice Cooper, for example. The worst part is not only do these crappy compilations have a habit of surfacing every time the artist has a genuine new album out, but they're also frequently marketed as 'Best Ofs', despite missing crucial tracks. What a load of...

definitely!
experienced this when i was looking for an AC best of, and bought a sony one (as it was cheap lol).
Shouldve looked at the tracklist first though....