’60s rock Web site sues 2 record companies

Warner Music Group Corp. and Sony BMG Music Entertainment are being sued by a rock-music archive that accuses the record companies of conspiring to destroy its business.

Bill Graham Archives, based in San Francisco, filed the claim last week in response to a lawsuit brought in December by the Grateful Dead, the Doors, Led Zeppelin and Carlos Santana, who claim the archive infringes their copyrights.

The competing claims were filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco.

William Sagan, CEO of Bill Graham Archives, bought memorabilia and concert tapes collected by the late concert promoter Bill Graham in 2003 for $6 million. Sagan’s Web site, WolfgangsVault.com, sells the items and offers free concerts as streaming audio broadcasts.

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“Everything that has been done to date has been accomplished lawfully,” said Michael Elkin, an attorney for Sagan with Winston & Strawn, said in an interview. “Now the company is fighting for its life.”

Elkin’s counterclaim, which also names the suing musicians, asks a judge to find that the archive owns the rights needed to do business.

The archive accuses the defendants of fraud, breach of contract and conspiring to put the archive out of business.

Bill Graham Archives had sales of about $3 million last year, spokeswoman Alyssa Miller said. Warner and Sony BMG officials met with representatives of the archive in 2005 and 2006, seeking to share licensing rights to the material, Elkins said. On Aug. 23, Warner executives “indicated their objective of partial or total acquisition” of the archive, according to the complaint.

A planned Nov. 28 meeting with Warner CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr. was canceled four hours ahead of time, according to the counterclaim. The musicians sued about two weeks later and Sony BMG joined the case Feb.
5. The archive alleges that Warner recruited Sony BMG and the musicians.

“The counterclaims are completely lacking in merit,” said Ashlie Beringer, a lawyer with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher who represents the musicians and Sony BMG. “The defendants clearly hope to distract the parties from the real issues in this case.”

Spokespeople for Warner and Sony BMG, who declined to be identified, wouldn’t comment. Warner is the world’s fourth- largest record company and Sony BMG is the second-largest. Both are based in New York.

The musicians claim in their lawsuit that they gave Graham a limited license to give away promotional items, not authorization to sell the archive to new owners.

The plaintiffs seek damages and reimbursement for all archive-related sales. They asked a judge to bar Sagan from selling any of Graham’s memorabilia or tapes and order the seizure of the entire inventory, now stored at a warehouse in San Francisco.

Bill Graham – born Wolfgang Grajonca in Germany in 1931 – put on concerts at the Fillmore West and Winterland in San Francisco and the Fillmore East in New York, promoting acts including the Rolling Stones, the Grateful Dead and the Jefferson Airplane. He was killed in a helicopter crash in 1991.

After Graham’s death, his archive was sold to SFX Entertainment Inc., then to Clear Channel Communications Inc., and then to Sagan.

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