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Jay-Z and Damon Dash settle dispute over Reasonable Doubt NFT sale

By Chris Cooke | Published on Tuesday 14 June 2022

The legal dispute between Jay-Z and Damon Dash over the latter’s attempts to sell the rights in the former’s debut album as an NFT is over. Which is no fun at all. Given how entertaining Jay-Z’s testimony was when he was battling a perfume company in court, imagine how fun it would have been if he’d been in court facing off his Roc-A-Fella Records co-founder.

Jay-Z went legal a year ago after rights connected with his ‘Reasonable Doubt’ album were included in an NFT sale announced by Dash. The lawsuit argued that while Dash was a shareholder in Roc-A-Fella, that didn’t mean he could sell all or even a slice of the company’s only real remaining asset, that being the ‘Reasonable Doubt’ recording rights.

The lawsuit stated: “Dash can’t sell what he doesn’t own. By attempting such a sale, Dash has converted a corporate asset and has breached his fiduciary duties. The court should stop Dash … and hold him accountable for his brazen theft”.

The court did indeed stop Dash from going ahead with the NFT sale by quickly issuing an injunction to that effect, while the wider legal dispute in relation to Jay-Z’s attempts to hold his former business partner “accountable for his brazen theft” continued. For his part, Dash countersued accusing Jay-Z of transferring the streaming rights in ‘Reasonable Doubt’ to his company S Carter Enterprises LLC without the approval of the other Roc-A-Fella shareholders.

So that was all good fun. But no more, because according to papers filed with the courts yesterday, all of this has now been resolved. Both sides have agreed that “Roc-A-Fella Inc owns all rights to the album ‘Reasonable Doubt’ including its copyright. No shareholder or member of Roc-A-Fella Inc holds a direct ownership interest in ‘Reasonable Doubt’”.

The deal does also state, however, that while Dash cannot sell some or all of the ‘Reasonable Doubt’ rights, he can sell his third of the Roc-A-Fella company. So, good to have that all cleared up.

Although given that Dash told TMZ, shortly after Jay-Z’s original lawsuit was filed, that the whole thing was a big misunderstanding and that he’d actually been trying to sell his stake in the Roc-A-Fella company as an NFT, not his stake in the ‘Reasonable Doubt’ rights, I don’t know why the clear up has taken a whole year.