{"id":7954,"date":"2025-09-27T20:16:30","date_gmt":"2025-09-27T20:16:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wu-tang-album-lawsuit-against-martin-shkreli-can-proceed-judge-says\/"},"modified":"2025-09-27T20:16:30","modified_gmt":"2025-09-27T20:16:30","slug":"wu-tang-album-lawsuit-against-martin-shkreli-can-proceed-judge-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wu-tang-album-lawsuit-against-martin-shkreli-can-proceed-judge-says\/","title":{"rendered":"Wu-Tang\u00a0Album Lawsuit Against Martin Shkreli Can Proceed, Judge Says"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n\tMartin Shkreli <\/strong>must face a lawsuit over Wu-Tang Clan\u2019s one-of-a-kind album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin<\/em>, after a federal judge refused to dismiss a case over \u201cthe most expensive musical work ever sold.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a ruling Thursday, Judge Pamela K. Chen ruled that Shkreli had potentially violated federal protections for trade secrets by retaining copies of the ultra-rare rap album after he forfeited it to prosecutors as restitution after he was convicted of securities fraud.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe ruling went in favor of PleasrDAO, a group that bought Once Upon<\/em> at auction from prosecutors and has been trying to monetize it over the past two years. Pleasr sued Shkreli last year after he threatened to leak copies on the internet.<\/p>\n

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\n\tMuch of the ruling turned on a novel legal question: Whether a music album could qualify as a \u201ctrade secret,\u201d which more often applies to proprietary information guarded by companies against competitors. After much legal wrangling, Judge Chen said that Once Upon<\/em> could indeed fit under that law.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe secret and exclusive nature of the album is a large part of its intrinsic value,\u201d the judge wrote Thursday. \u201cThere can be no serious debate that the value of the album \u2026 was largely based on its secret and exclusive nature.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut she also acknowledged that the circumstances surrounding Once Upon <\/em>\u2013 a legendary, one-of-a-kind album bound by an 88-year secrecy clause that was later seized and resold by federal agents \u2013 created a truly strange set of facts for a federal judge to analyze.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThough the court agrees with plaintiff \u2026 it cannot be understated that the application of trade secret doctrine to the unique facts of this case is unchartered territory,\u201d she wrote.<\/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. In addition to the bizarre trappings, it came with strict legal stipulations \u2014 namely, that the one-of-a-kind album could not be released to the general public until 2103.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 2015, the album was purchased for $2 million by Shkreli \u2014 soon to become the infamous \u201cPharma Bro\u201d who who intentionally spiked the price of crucial AIDS medications. But after he was convicted of securities fraud in 2017, he forfeited it to prosecutors to help pay a huge restitution sentence.<\/p>\n

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\n\tPleasrDAO, a collective of early NFT collectors and digital artists, then bought Once Upon<\/em> from the government in 2021 for $4 million, and in 2024 acquired the copyrights and other rights for another $750,000. The group has been playing it at private events and has sold extremely limited access.<\/p>\n

\n\tPleasr sued Shkreli in June 2024 after he made threats to release the album publicly, claiming it would destroy the exclusivity that the company had purchased. The lawsuit accused him of both breaching the federal forfeiture order and violating federal trade secrets law, which protects valuable proprietary information from misappropriation.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn Thursday\u2019s decision, Judge Chen rejected that first claim \u2013 ruling that a private company had no standing to enforce an agreement that Shkreli had struck with federal prosecutors. But she ruled that Pleasr could move ahead with the trade secrets claim, as well as another claim seeking the return of property.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a statement Friday, Shkreli\u2019s attorney Edward Andrew Paltzik praised the court for dismissing some elements of the case against his client: \u201cEliminating half of PleasrDAO\u2019s case prior to discovery is a significant step forward in our effort to vindicate Mr. Shkreli, who we unequivocally believe engaged in absolutely zero wrongdoing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn his own statement Friday, Pleasr\u2019s attorney Stephen Cooper said:\u00a0 \u201cThe judge wrote a thorough and well-considered decision and we are pleased that we will be able to fully and aggressively proceed with our case against Mr. Shkreli.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDespite Pleasr\u2019s best efforts at secrecy, copies of Once Upon<\/em> might already been floating around the internet. Last year, Shkreli said in court filings that he had turned over all copies that he could find, but that he also didn\u2019t know exactly who he had shared it with.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBecause I shared the musical work several times several years ago, I cannot recall each and every time that I have shared the musical work,\u201d he told the judge. \u201cIt is possible, and indeed I find it highly likely, that one of the many people who viewed, heard, or otherwise accessed the musical work via my social media recorded the musical work and retains a copy of the same.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Martin Shkreli must face a lawsuit over Wu-Tang Clan\u2019s one-of-a-kind album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, after a federal judge refused to dismiss a case over \u201cthe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7955,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[423,303,1855,1849,1856,3160],"class_list":["post-7954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-judge","tag-lawsuit","tag-martin","tag-proceed","tag-shkreli","tag-wutangalbum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7954","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=7954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7954\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}