Sony Music has been told it must pay the owner of a small US indie label $5 million after it failed to include the label's logo on reissues of Meatloaf's 'Bat Out Of Hell'.
Steve Popovich's Cleveland International Records originally signed Meat Loaf in the mid-seventies and negotiated the deal which saw his legendary album 'Bat Out Of Hell' released by Epic Records, then owned by CBS. The relationship between the major and the indie later soured, however, and a dispute over royalties went to court in the late nineties - by that time Sony had bought CBS's music interests. Cleveland was paid $6.7 million as a result of the dispute, and a condition of that settlement was the inclusion of the Cleveland logo on any future reissues of the 'Bat Out Of Hell' album.
However reissues continued to be released for another year without the Cleveland logo, leading to new litigation which Popovich won in 2005. Sony appealed that ruling, claiming the logo was missed off because of human error rather than any deliberate attempts to ignore the earlier court decision. But the appeal courts last week backed the 2005 judgement, meaning the major must now pay Cleveland another $5 million.
Welcoming the new ruling, Popovich told reporters: "I worked too hard for them and made them too much money to get robbed now".