A federal court in Miami has ordered TVT Records to pay $9.1 million in damages to rival indie Slip-N-Slide over a dispute related to Cuban-American rapper Pitbull.
Pitbull was signed to Slip-N-Slide before signing to TVT. Although SNS agreed to let the rapper out of his commitments to them, they kept the rights to the album he had recorded for them. They planned to release their Pitbull album, 'Pitbull Welcome To The 305', in the wake of his TVT released 2004 debut 'MIAMI', obviously to capitalize on the buzz TVT's marketing had gained for the rap star.
However, as SNS planned that release TVT claimed that the rival indie had reworked many of Pitbull's recordings without the rapper's permission, and that while they owned the copyright to the original recordings, they didn't have the rights to make those changes. They also claimed SNS were using a Pitbull logo that they owned on the release. TVT bosses contacted SNS's distributor ADA to communicate their concerns about the release, which led to ADA halting distribution of the long player, fearing they to might be liable if TVT's claims against SNS were true.
Needless to say, that kind of buggered up SNS's plans for the Pitbull release, and as a result they sued TVT for "tortious interference" with its contract with ADA. This being America, TVT immediately counter-sued - for trademark infringements.
The whole thing finally reached court this month, and the jury hearing the dispute sided with SNS, believing their claims that TVT had no right to interfere with its contract with ADA, and that they used "improper methods" to prevent them from releasing the Pitbull recordings they legitimately owned. The court ordered TVT to pay SNS $2,279,200 to compensate them for their direct losses in relation to the cancelled album release plus $6,837,600 in punitive damages.
Needless to say, TVT intend to appeal, with a spokeswoman for the label telling reporters: "TVT believes that the verdict is contrary to, and unsupported by, the evidence in the case, as well as being excessive. Accordingly, TVT will be pursuing all available remedies before the district court and on appeal".