Evil Angel announced Wednesday that it has filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California against Direct Distributors, Inc., a New York distributor of adult product.
The Complaint alleges causes of action for copyright infringement, contributory infringement, trademark infringement and unfair competition and seeks both injunctive relief and millions of dollars in statutory penalties.
“It’s definitely going to be one of a few we’re filing,” said Evil Angel’s Karen Stagliano. “We’re looking at a replication plant. We’re looking at people that bought from Direct. Anybody who buys it and sells {counterfeit DVDs} is going to be considered someone that we’re going after.”
A Direct Distributors representative said Wednesday he was not aware of the suit.
“This is absolutely not true,” said Direct Distributors’ Don Sieve. “We buy direct from Evil Angel. I can’t imagine why there would be any problems with us.”
Stagliano confirmed that Direct Distributors had been a customer of Evil Angel until just prior to the filing.
Direct Distributors' owner was not available for comment at press time.
Evil Angel announced on May 2 that it has been aggressively pursuing sellers of counterfeit Evil Angel DVDs. That day the company announced it had filed a multi-million dollar, federal counterfeiting lawsuit against the Chatsworth-based distributor, DVD Concepts, Inc. (click here for story)
Evil Angel representatives recently visited video stores in New York and found thousands of counterfeit DVDs as well as evidence as to their source. Evil Angel has also obtained evidence documenting Direct Distributors' shipment of counterfeit DVDs to a sub-distributor in California.
In a company statement, Evil Angel said, “We feel we can't apologize enough to fans and consumers of the Evil Angel product who have been unfortunate enough to have purchased one of these very inferior DVDs. We assure you of our continued intention to provide only the very best quality product we can.”
“Evil Angel is committed to eradicating the piracy of its productions and will pursue, to the fullest extent of the law, any party who manufactures, sells and/or assists any third party in manufacturing or selling counterfeit Evil Angel product. Evil Angel, with Jules Jordan Video, who has been a principal in adding additional weight in this fight, together with our attorneys, Allan Gelbard and Sean Macias, continue to investigate leads and we anticipate the filing of additional cases in the near future. We will announce the details of these pending actions once the prospective defendants have been served.”
The statement continued: “If any wholesaler, retailer or end-user feels that they may have inadvertently acquired one or more counterfeit Evil Angel DVDs, either because of the inferior appearance of the packaging, the inferior quality of the video, or because certain proprietary menu features are inoperative, please do not hesitate to call our offices at (818) 787-1414. We are very interested to hear from anyone who may be able to help stamp out the distribution of counterfeit product.”
