{"id":1360,"date":"2024-06-15T00:23:13","date_gmt":"2024-06-15T00:23:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/exo-band-members-hit-with-lawsuit-by-sm-entertainment-over-royalty-fee\/"},"modified":"2024-06-18T06:28:42","modified_gmt":"2024-06-18T06:28:42","slug":"exo-band-members-hit-with-lawsuit-by-sm-entertainment-over-royalty-fee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/exo-band-members-hit-with-lawsuit-by-sm-entertainment-over-royalty-fee\/","title":{"rendered":"EXO Band Members Hit With Lawsuit by SM Entertainment Over Royalty Fee"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/p>\n
\n

EXO Band Members Hit With Lawsuit by SM Entertainment Over Royalty Fee – Just days after a company established to release solo music by band members of K-pop group EXO declared \u201cwar\u201d against the stars\u2019 longtime label and management agency SM Entertainment over a contract dispute, the K-pop giant has filed a lawsuit against the trio.<\/p>\n

As reported by the Korea JoongAng Daily<\/a><\/em>, SM filed a civil suit on Wednesday (June 12) against Chen, Baekhyun and Xiumin \u2014 who are also known as the trio EXO-CBX \u2014 demanding payment of a 10% intellectual property royalty fee it claims the stars have been evading for two months. According to SM, the singers agreed to pay the fee in a contract signed last year as part of an agreement that allowed them to pursue their solo endeavors outside of SM \u2014 and pay a discounted distribution fee for their solo music distributed by SM\u2019s new majority shareholder Kakao \u2014 while continuing group activities as EXO and EXO-CBX under the K-pop giant.<\/p>\n

In a Monday (June 10) press conference held by representatives for INB100 \u2014 the newly established company Baekhyun founded in 2023 that also signed Chen and Xiumin for their respective solo careers \u2014 Cha Ga-won<\/strong>, the president and majority shareholder of INB100\u2019s holding company One Hundred, accused SM of imposing a 10% intellectual property royalty fee for the members\u2019 stage names, as well as the EXO and EXO-CBX names, in exchange for the distribution fee discount for their solo endeavors. However, INB100 representatives maintain that SM has failed to deliver its end of the deal, which they claim frees INB100 from its obligation to pay the 10% IP royalty. INB100 representatives further alleged that the company had sent a formal letter of complaint to SM in April but that the K-pop giant never responded.<\/p>\n

In the wake of the press conference, SM sent out a press release disputing the allegations. In the release, the company claimed the 10% intellectual property fee was established in court mediation when previous EXO members exited the group while still under contract \u2014 specifically Kris Wu, Luhan and Tao, all of whom left between 2014 and 2015. SM also alleged that the stars\u2019 contracts with the company are still valid and that the trio benefits from the EXO brand but are not fulfilling their contractual obligations, despite the agency acting in good faith with the lower distribution rate. The company also claimed it had failed to respond to INB100\u2019s format letter of complaint because it hadn\u2019t wanted to distract from the rollout of new music releases from EXO members Chen, D.O., and Suho last month.<\/p>\n

The discord that erupted this month arrived almost exactly one year after Chen, Baekhyun and Xiumin first pursued legal action against SM over what they deemed \u201cslave contracts,\u201d though that dispute was subsequently settled when the trio reportedly opted to maintain their exclusive contracts with SM.<\/p>\n

Earlier this week, rumors circulated that an upcoming EXO album was in jeopardy as a result of the lawsuits. But on Tuesday (June 11), INB100 put out a statement<\/a> clarifying that the issues have no relation to EXO and that EXO-CBX will \u201cearnestly participate in EXO\u2019s full group activities with SM in the future.\u201d SM subsequently backed up that statement by saying<\/a> \u201cthere has been no further discussion about changes to the plan\u201d for new music. EXO\u2019s most recent release was the group\u2019s seventh studio album Exist<\/em>, which dropped last July.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

EXO Band Members Hit With Lawsuit by SM Entertainment Over Royalty Fee – Just days after a company established to release solo music by band members of K-pop […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1361,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1105,1802,1798,1986,717,1067,303,1865,1936],"class_list":["post-1360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-band","tag-entertainment","tag-exo","tag-exo-band-members-hit-with-lawsuit-by-sm-entertainment-over-royalty-fee","tag-fee","tag-hit","tag-lawsuit","tag-members","tag-royalty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1360"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1395,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1360\/revisions\/1395"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}