Yoko Ono accuses John Lennon’s aide of copyright infringement
Yoko Ono has accused a former aide of her late husband John Lennon of breaking a 20-year-old court order preventing him from profiting off the family.
This latest suit, filed on Friday, September 1, at the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, follows a decades-old dispute between the pair.
In 1983, Frederic Seaman, a former aide to The Beatles member, pleaded guilty to second-degree larceny for the theft of Lennon’s journals. According to Ono, Seaman had also taken unreleased recordings, love letters, and personal photos from Lennon’s home.
“At the time, Mrs Lennon believed that to be the end of her ordeal with Seaman,” said the suit. “Those representations turned out to be lies and the start of yet another scheme.”
Ono again took legal action in 1999 after finding out that Seaman had allegedly failed to return Lennon's property and had sold it on the memorabilia market.
In 2003, the parties entered into a final judgment on consent, where Seaman agreed to be bound by a confidentiality agreement and to stop profiting off of Lennon’s family photos. He also offered an apology to Ono in open court.
However, Ono has now claimed that Seaman’s actions didn’t stop there. According to the suit, in September this year, Seaman sat for an interview in his apartment, surrounded by Lennon memorabilia.
In this interview, Seaman allegedly discussed a series of topics which are prohibited by the 2003 injunction. These topics included his employment with the Lennon family and Lennon’s murder.
“Incredibly, Seaman then went on to state his intent to willfully and intentionally violate the injunction even further in connection with his book ‘The Last Days of John Lennon’,” said the suit, claiming that Seaman had said he would like to revise it and publish the book at some point in the future.
Ono claimed that these statements were made in “knowing violation of the clear and unambiguous language of two express restrictions in the injunction”.
Now, Ono has sued Seaman for copyright infringement over the family photos and breach of contract and is seeking up to $150,000 in damages.
The suit added: “By this action, Mrs Lennon seeks to again try to disabuse Seaman that he is entitled to exploit the name and IP of Mrs Lennon. Unless otherwise ordered by this court again and held in contempt and punished for his contumacious behaviour, it is clear that Seaman’s abuses will continue.”
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