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Alan Parsons awarded nearly $5 million in dispute with former manager

By | Published on Tuesday 17 May 2022

Alan Parsons

A US court last week awarded Alan Parsons nearly $5 million in damages as part of a dispute with his former manager, John Regna of World Entertainment Associates Of America. Judge and jury together found that Regna was liable for trademark infringement, unfair competition and breach of fiduciary duty, among other things.

Having first build his reputation via studio work with the likes of The Beatles and Pink Floyd, Parsons enjoyed success in the 1970s and 1980s through his creative partnership with the late Eric Woolfson. That collaboration used the moniker The Alan Parsons Project. In more recent times Parsons has worked on a solo basis, and between 2009 and 2018 his projects were managed by Regna and WEAA.

Parsons and Regna ultimately stopped working together due to, according to Parsons, “Regna’s erratic and intolerable behaviour”. After they split, Regna put together a live show featuring session musicians who worked with the Alan Parsons Project back in the day and then started promoting that show using variations of Parsons’ brand, including “The Project, the original voice, original musicians of The Alan Parsons Project & Friends”.

That unsurprisingly pissed off Parsons who, after initially going legal in Spain to try to stop a show Regna was organising there, sued his former manager through the federal courts in Florida in January 2020. The judge hearing the case last year ruled in favour of Parsons via summary judgement on some of the claims the producer had made, but not all of them, with the remaining matters being argued before a jury. They then mainly sided with Parsons as well.

As a result, on Friday Regna was ordered to pay his former client $4.95 million in damages. That breaks down as $800,000 in actual damages and another $1.7 million in punitive damages relating to trademark infringement; and $325,000 in actual damages and $1 million in punitive damages relating to unfair competition.

As well as that, there’s an additional $200,000 in damages for diluting Parsons’ trademarks; $400,000 for using Parsons’ name or likeness without permission; $300,000 for Regna breaching his fiduciary duty to his ex-client; $75,000 for breach of contract; and $150,000 in relation to the manager’s use of monies he was holding for his client.

So all in all, a definite win for Parsons.



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