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Preliminary injunction extends ban on release of unofficial Prince recordings

By | Published on Wednesday 24 May 2017

Prince

A US court has told producer Ian Boxill that he is barred from releasing any of the tracks he collaborated on with Prince until his legal battle with the late musician’s estate has been fully resolved.

As previously reported, last month producer Boxill announced that he was planning to put out a six track EP of previously unreleased Prince tracks, via a label services company called Rogue Music Alliance, to coincide with the first anniversary of the musician’s death. The new tracks were seemingly the output of some collaborations the producer worked on with Prince between 2006 and 2008, which Boxill has since completed.

The Prince estate was not impressed with Boxill’s plan and went legal in a bid to stop the release. A judge initially issued a temporary restraining order that stopped Boxill’s release plans, which was subsequently extended until Monday of this week. Now a preliminary injunction has been issued that means Boxill is barred from making public any of his collaborations with Prince until the conclusion of the estate’s legal action.

The estate argues that Boxill’s attempts to release the tracks he made with Prince breaches an agreement he signed at the time the two men collaborated. Specifically, according to Courthouse News, a confidentiality agreement that states that recordings from Boxill’s work with Prince “shall remain [Paisley Park Enterprises’] sole and exclusive property, shall not be used by [Boxill] in any way whatsoever, and shall be returned to Paisley immediately upon request”.

Paisley Park Enterprises, of course, is Prince’s company, which filed the lawsuit against Boxill alongside estate administrators Comercia Bank. The preliminary injunction bans both Boxill and his business partners Rogue Music Alliance from distributing Prince recordings, and from using the Prince trademark.

This week’s court ruling states that “on balance, the [relevant] factors weigh in favour of granting plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction. However, the scope of a preliminary injunction should not be greater than necessary to protect the movant until the dispute can be resolved on the merits”.



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