{"id":2394,"date":"2024-08-26T14:44:14","date_gmt":"2024-08-26T14:44:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/martin-shkreli-must-turn-over-copies-of-rare-wu-tang-album-judge-says\/"},"modified":"2024-08-26T14:44:14","modified_gmt":"2024-08-26T14:44:14","slug":"martin-shkreli-must-turn-over-copies-of-rare-wu-tang-album-judge-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/martin-shkreli-must-turn-over-copies-of-rare-wu-tang-album-judge-says\/","title":{"rendered":"Martin Shkreli Must Turn Over Copies of Rare Wu-Tang\u00a0Album, Judge Says"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tA federal judge has ordered convicted pharma executive Martin Shkreli<\/strong> to hand over his copies of Wu-Tang Clan\u2019s Once Upon a Time in Shaolin<\/em>, rejecting his claims that he had a right to retain duplicates of the one-of-a-kind album even after he forfeited it to federal prosecutors.<\/p>\n

\n\tFollowing a hearing Friday in Manhattan federal court, Judge Pamela K. Chen<\/strong> granted a preliminary injunction to PleasrDAO \u2014 a digital art collective that bought the album in 2021 after Shkreli was forced to forfeit it as part of his criminal case.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn addition to extending previous restrictions barring him from sharing the album, the judge ruled that Shkreli must hand over \u201call recordings of the Album\u2019s contents that Defendant possesses or controls\u201d to his own attorneys. He has until Friday to file written confirmation that he\u2019s done so.<\/p>\n

\n\tBy granting the motion, Judge Chen rejected Shkreli\u2019s arguments about the copies. In court filings last month, his lawyers argued that making private copies had been legal when he owned the rare album \u2014 and that he had not been required to turn those copies over to prosecutors when he handed over the famous original CD.<\/p>\n

\n\tPleasr sued Shkreli in June over the potential leak of the album, accusing him of violating both their purchase agreement and the federal forfeiture order. They also accused him of violating federal trade secrets law, which protects valuable proprietary information from misappropriation.<\/p>\n

\n\tWu-Tang\u2019s fabled album was recorded in secret and published just once, on a CD secured in an engraved nickel and silver box. Though the group intended the bizarre trappings as a protest against the commodification of music, Shaolin later became the ultimate commodity. In 2015, Shkreli \u2014 soon to become infamous as the man who intentionally spiked the price of crucial AIDS medications \u2014 bought it at auction for $2 million.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen it was initially sold, Shaolin came with much-discussed stipulations \u2014 namely, that the one-of-a-kind album could not be released to the general public until 2103. But Shkreli\u2019s lawyers say the deal granted him the right to \u201cduplicate or replicate the work for private use.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter Shkreli was convicted of securities fraud in 2017, he forfeited the album to federal prosecutors to help pay his multi-million dollar restitution sentence. Pleasr then bought the album from the government in 2021 for $4 million, and in 2024 acquired the copyrights and other rights to the album for another $750,000.<\/p>\n

\n\tPleasr, which has recently been attempting to monetize the album, sued Shkreli on the grounds that had been threatening to release the album publicly and destroy the exclusivity that the company had purchased.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a statement following Friday\u2019s ruling, Pleasr\u2019s attorney, Steven Cooper<\/strong> of the law firm Reed Smith, called the ruling \u201can important victory\u201d for his client: \u201cWe are pleased that Judge Chen recognized that immediate relief was necessary to thwart the continuing bad acts of Mr. Shrkeli.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAn attorney for Shkreli did not immediately return a request for comment.<\/p>\n

\n\tFollowing Friday\u2019s ruling, the injunction against Shkreli will be in place until a final ruling is reached at the end of the case. Barring a settlement, the lawsuit will now proceed to full litigation \u2013 including discovery, dueling motions from each side, and an eventual jury trial.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A federal judge has ordered convicted pharma executive Martin Shkreli to hand over his copies of Wu-Tang Clan\u2019s Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, rejecting his claims that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2395,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2744,423,1855,2126,1856,3159,3160],"class_list":["post-2394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-copies","tag-judge","tag-martin","tag-rare","tag-shkreli","tag-turn","tag-wutangalbum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2394","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=2394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2394\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}