A judge member of the arbitration panel assigned to the New Destiny/Trade News dispute has blocked a bid by Trade News to have an arbitrator group hold New Destiny’s half of the Homegrown Video tour revenues that have been generated under a contested affiliate deal between the two companies.
Judge Richard Neal rejected the motion August 17. David Olson, an attorney representing New Destiny/Homegrown, said he now expected Trade News to comply with the ruling and allow New Destiny/Homegrown to have their share of those revenues.
“Basically, what they were trying to do was take our split of the revenues, or alleged profits, from the ongoing administration of the site, and deposit that with [the arbitration group] JAMS, so they would pocket their cut and we would have to wait until the end of the case to get our cut,” Olson told AVNOnline.com.
Ira Rothken, who represents Trade News and Voice Media Inc. in the case, was unavailable for comment before this story went to press.
Last week, in a case in which New Destiny is suing Trade News and VMI for trademark infringement and other issues, Neal awarded New Destiny a preliminary injunction against Trade News, citing “recent evidence” that CE Cash, which is owned by Trade News, continued using the Homegrown Video tour “undermin[ing] confidence that [CE Cash] completely ceased the alleged infringement.”
“While acknowledging that final decision must await a full hearing on the merits,” Neal wrote, “serious questions have been raised about liability.”
Each side took differing views of that preliminary injunction. Olson said it showed his side had demonstrated Trade News was “in fact still using the copyrighted tour. They had the Homegrown tour with a link to sign for Homegrown membership, but if you clicked they were enrolling users to two of their sites.”
Rothken, however, said the injunction was only about the “notion that CE Cash had already terminated [its relationship with] New Destiny, so there wouldn’t be any burden to them to stop doing business with New Destiny.” Rothken also pointed out there would be no decision on the full merits of the case until the evidentiary hearing “some time next year.”
