BBREAKING CULTURE CITY NEWS

White Stripes win lawsuit over royalties

this just in the white stripes win there lawsuit agist a local producer

this is just breaking here is the rought copy from the detroit News and Free Press web sight

Detnews.com

White Stripes win lawsuit over royalties

Paul Egan / The Detroit News

DETROIT -- The Detroit garage rock band the White Stripes does not have to share royalties from the band's first two albums with a city record producer, a federal court jury ruled today.

The jury rejected claims from Jim Diamond of Ghetto Recorders that he held co-authorship and deserved a share of royalties from the band's self-titled debut album in 1999 and its second album, "De Stijl," released in 2000.

Lead singer Jack White said outside court he was pleased with the verdict and admitted he was a little worried the jury would go the other way.

"You never know what's going to happen in a trial," said White.

Bert Deixler, White's California attorney, told the jury Diamond acted as a technician who did what White told him to do inside the sound studio and was paid $35 an hour for his services.

Diamond "manufactured these claims … only after the Whites became successful," Deixler said in reference to Jack and Meg White, the Grammy-award-winning band's only two members. "Money changes everything."

Diamond's attorney, Stephen Wasinger, argued White agreed to list Diamond as a co-producer on the debut album but "Jack White changed his position once Jack White and Megan White realized there was money to be made from these records."

Fro the Free Press web sight, Freep.com

Breaking news
Studio owner loses lawsuit against White Stripes

June 15, 2006

Email this Print this BY BRIAN MCCOLLUM

FREE PRESS POP MUSIC WRITER
A jury ruled in favor of the White Stripes Thursday afternoon in a civil case involving ownership of the group’s earliest work.

The eight-member panel deliberated just 20 minutes before returning its verdict in Detroit federal court, rejecting claims by studio owner Jim Diamond that he deserved part ownership of copyrights for the band’s first two albums.

In addition to back payments Diamond could have received with a favorable ruling, the case involved credit and recognition for the creation of the White Stripes’ music, a signature sound closely linked to the modern revival of Detroit rock.

Attorneys for the White Stripes had argued that Diamond’s engineering work on the records -- microphone placement, reverberation effects, mixing -- did not meet the standards necessary to claim co-authorship. In closing arguments Thursday morning, they equated his role to that of a carpenter following an original blueprint.

“The White Stripes” and “De Stijl,” recorded at Diamond’s Ghetto Recorders studio in 1999 and 2000, sold nearly 600,000 total copies in the wake of the White Stripes’ international breakout in 2001.

With Jack and Meg White looking on, Los Angeles attorney Bert Deixler told jurors that Diamond’s assertion was akin to the claim-jumping of unscrupulous Old West miners. He argued that Diamond’s engineering work on the records did not meet the standard for authorship.

“None of that constitutes originating an original work or causing it to come into being,” Deixler said Thursday in court.

Royal Oak attorney Stephen Wasinger, arguing for Diamond, cited liner notes from the 1999 album “The White Stripes,” in which the band voluntarily gave Diamond a co-producer credit. He called it his client’s most persuasive evidence, from a time period “when credit was more important than money.”

“Mr. Diamond at that time, in that place, was equally talented,” Wasinger told the jury.

Before sending jurors to deliberate, federal judge Avern Cohn patiently walked the eight-person panel through the basics of the notoriously complicated field of copyright law, a field in which he’d earlier acknowledged a lack of experience.

But jurors apparently encountered little trouble navigating the case, delivering its decision far more quickly than many onlookers expected. Jack and Meg White were still eating lunch nearby in downtown Detroit when word came that the jury was set to return to the courtroom shortly after 2 p.m.