JM Productions, through its attorney Allan B. Gelbard, revealed today that it had filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit against Canadian company Kaytel Video Distribution, one of its principals Alain Elmaleh, and several other unnamed individuals who are allegedly involved in either the ownership or operation of the company.
At issue are five JM Productions productions -- The Violation of Aurora Snow, The Violation of Kiki D’Aire and Perverted Stories 34, 35 and 36 – all of which were licensed to Kaytel for VHS and DVD distribution in Canada by Alante International Sales, which handles foreign rights sales for JM. Specifically excluded from the deal, however, were any Internet rights, which JM maintains exclusively for itself.
“Alante did a deal with this guy [Elmaleh], who turned around and did a deal with AdultBouncer,” Gelbard charged. “We’ve already sued AdultBouncer and settled with them, and they came back to us and said, ‘We have a contract from this guy that gave us this stuff’ – ‘this stuff’ being Internet rights. And the contract appears to be creatively created. We have an original agreement from Alante to Kaytel, which specifically precludes Internet rights, but that paragraph is amazingly missing from Kaytel’s agreement with AdultBouncer.”
According to the Complaint, Elmaleh, acting through Kaytel, which Gelbard maintains is simply a name under which Elmaleh does business, packaged the five features together with some stills and sold the package to AdultBouncer as “video on demand” content for its Website. Gelbard believes Elmaleh may have made the same deal with several other Website operators.
“I would assume they [AdultBouncer] are going to have to go after Kaytel for indemnity in the settlement of our lawsuit with AdultBouncer, which has been done, and I believe that AdultBouncer is being sued by other people for copyright infringement,” Gelbard said. “I believe Jules Jordan is suing them as well. In my initial discovery, they [AdultBouncer] basically had said, ‘Look, we get all our stuff from this guy and he’s been telling us he’s got it. We’ve had some problems with him in the past but we thought he’d cleaned it up,’ and apparently not only have they not ‘cleaned it up,’ but this may be an ongoing thing.”
The complaint has been filed in the United States District Court for the Central District of California, which includes the Los Angeles area, and if the case comes to trial, that will occur in Los Angeles.
Before that, however, Gelbard will seek to prevent Elmaleh and Kaytel from continuing to sell Internet content based on JM copyrights.
“We will go in and get an injunction relatively quickly, and we’ll see what happens,” Gelbard advised. “This is a federal lawsuit, so the timetables are generally a little quicker than state actions, and federal judges understand copyright infringement. It’s an exclusively federal jurisdictional issue anyway, so I don’t anticipate a problem as far as getting a permanent injunction.”
Besides preventing Elmaleh and Kaytel from packaging its material for Internet use, JM is also seeking statutory damages of as much as $150,000 for each feature the defendants packaged and sold, or actual damages which may be even greater, if an accounting shows that the defendants realized even greater profits.
“The Violation of Aurora Snow is definitely way up there; that’s definitely one of my best sellers,” said JM owner Jeff Steward. “Perverted Stories have won numerous awards, including Most Outrageous Sex Scene, Best Continuing Series two years in a row; Jim Powers for one of those got Best Director – Other Genre, and of course, the Violations have won tons of awards. That may have been why those five were chosen.”
The suit also seeks damages for unfair competition and trademark dilution, which may run into the millions.
The lesson, as far as Steward is concerned, is, “Don’t mess with JM.”
“I’m not going to sit idly by and have people pirate my stuff,” Steward vowed. “It’s not going to happen, and if there’s a message in here, it’s that if you pirate JM Productions, I will go after you.”
“I’m looking out for everyone in the industry,” he continued. “If someone’s going to pirate from one person, I’m certain they’re going to do it to somebody else, too. It’s important that everyone sticks together. There’s not much camaraderie in this industry on that, I don’t think.”
The lack of a concerted anti-piracy effort in the adult video industry would seem to bear that out. Pleasure Productions, Evil Angel Productions and Anabolic Video have all launched public campaigns to protect their own material, but were generally unsuccessful in convincing other producers and distributors to engage in long-term efforts to combat piracy. Pleasure is currently involved in ongoing actions against several alleged New York City area video pirates, though few details of that effort are known. Watch AVN.com for future reports on that situation.
