Tom Jones has begun legal proceedings against a Californian company called C/F International who, he claims, is illegally distributing sound recordings he made as part of a TV show in 1981. Jones and his company, Tom Jones Enterprises, is seeking to stop the licensing firm from distributing rights to sound recordings from the 24 episode Tom Jones Show, which features all sorts of Jones solo performances and some pretty high profile collaborations too. The legal papers also seem to claim that any licensing rights C/F did once have (to the TV shows rather than the sound recordings pulled off them) are long since terminated anyway due to various breaches of contract.
In a statement, Tom Jones Enterprises said this week: "[We] have commenced legal proceedings in California against C/F International, Inc [and] its principal, Burt Rosen, seeking rulings that the [defendants] never had any right to exploit sound recordings of Jones' performances in the television programs, that they no longer have any rights in the programs themselves and that an injunction be granted preventing them, their licensees and others acting in concert with them from further exploiting the unauthorised recordings taken from the programs and the programs themselves".
Jones says he feels the distribution of the recordings is "deceiving the public as to their source, quality and authenticity", and that he is seeking the injunction against C/F to "prevent further deception and fraud of the public and to protect [his] reputation and career".
Commenting on the case, Gordon Williams of Lee & Thompson, Jones' London based legal counsel, told CMU: "Don Engel, a prominent California attorney, is handling the seminal proceeding against the licensors of the recordings intended to determine, among other things, that no one has a right to distribute sound recordings taken from the television programs. Our firm will follow by instituting actions here and wherever necessary to ensure that the unauthorized inferior product is removed from circulation. The recordings have spawned hundreds of titles of various forms and permutations that are currently being sold through every possible avenue of distribution worldwide".
C/F are yet to comment.