If I ever finish my law degree and, in a radical change of heart, decide to become a lawyer, I want to be Prince's lawyer - he must be doing very well thank you very much given how litigious the singer always linked to purple has become of late.
Prince's latest legal action is against a Norwegian company who released a cover version extravaganza to celebrate the singer's fiftieth birthday. The box set featured cover versions of 81 Prince songs recorded by various bands from Norway. To be fair to Prince, he is probably in the right here because, as I understand it, the project was unlicensed.
There seems to have been some confusion among the people who set it all up who were under the impression that because no-one profited from the project they didn't need permission from Prince's people to record versions of the songs. Of course that's not true, and according to reports C&C Records should have paid Prince's publishing agents an eight dollar mechanical royalty for ever copy of 'Shockadelica' sold, a sum of money not accounted for in their budgets.
Prince seemingly became aware of the whole thing when the man behind C&C Records, Prince fan Christer Falck, got in touch with the singer's people with a view to sending him a copy of the covers album. His people responded by suing and demanding all remaining physical copies of the release be destroyed.
Of course, given that digital copies of the album are in circulation, the lawsuit will probably mean the unofficial covers project will now go from being a low profile Norwegian venture to a global hit, as is the way with such things.