LawFuel – Actor Kevin Costner has sued a company for breach of contrac…

LawFuel – Actor Kevin Costner has sued a company for breach of contract in respect of the actor’s musical venture, The Kevin Costner Band.

Costner’s Kevin’s Music LLC filed the lawsuit on Tuesday claiming the New York-based Mahee Worldwide Ventures Inc. made “numerous promises regarding their capability to promote Mr. Costner’s music” if they could use Costner’s fame to help gain attention for the band. The lawsuit claims the Mahee Worldwide promoter “ultimately disappeared, refusing to cooperate or even to communicate with KML and its representatives.”

Despite their “numerous promises regarding their capability to promote Mr. Costner’s music,” Mahee Worldwide “ultimately disappeared, refusing to cooperate or even to communicate with KML and its representatives,” court documents, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, state.

E! reports that KML alleges in the suit that Mahee Worldwide approached Costner in December 2006 and offered “millions of dollars in guaranteed fees” if the promoters could capitalize on the Oscar winner’s celebrity to set up a multifaceted promotional campaign for his musically oriented side project—a campaign that both parties were ostensibly supposed to cash in on.

The parties signed a two-year deal on Jan. 25, 2007, calling for Mahee Worldwide to plug the group through various Websites and mobile content, create a site specifically for the Kevin Costner Band and organize up to five concerts per year featuring the actor and his mates.

Citing Lindsay Lohan as a previously satisfied customer, Mahee Worldwide promised KML 85 percent of revenues from the proposed “Costner Music Website”; 50 percent of the dough gleaned from cobranding sites; $160,000 per concert and several other guaranteed lump sums, the lawsuit states.

The full list of allegations includes breach of written and oral contract, breach of oral personal guaranty, fraud and deceit.


LawFuel – Google Inc has settled a copyright dispute with Agence Franc…

LawFuel – Google Inc has settled a copyright dispute with Agence France-Presse permitting the search engine to post parts of the agency’s news and photos onto its Google News site.

In a joint statement, the two companies said the settlement allows Google to post AFP content on Google News and other services. Terms of the pact were not disclosed, although some payment or royalty arrangement with the Agency will almost certainly have been negotiated.

The AFP lawsuit was being closely watched in the media industry as it sought damages and interest as well as to bar the use of AFP text and photos without prior permission. AFP agreed to withdraw the action.

Agence France-Presse filed the suit two years ago accusing the Web search company of copyright infringement for posting AFP headlines, news summaries and photos, without the news agency’s permission, on its automated Google News site.

“The most significant copyright case against Google News, that filed by Agence France-Presse back in March 2005, has now ended,” Danny Sullivan, a top analyst of the Web search industry, said of the deal on his Search Engine Land blog.

Google settled a separate dispute with The Associated Press in August. At that time the two companies announced a new business relationship under which Google would pay AP for news and photos, but financial details of that arrangement were not disclosed.

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