MCA Suit Claims Firm Counterfeited Records

MCA Records has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against a New Jersey budget-record distributor, claiming that the company manufactured and sold counterfeit recordings by such popular MCA artists as The Who, Jimmy Buffett and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

The suit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, alleges that Trenton-based Scorpio Music also infringed a trademark by illegally manufacturing and distributing recordings displaying the MCA logo.

Although the suit places no number on the amount of alleged counterfeit recordings manufactured and sold, it claims that, as a result of Scorpio’s alleged activities, Los Angeles-based MCA Records has suffered damages of more than $10 million.

In what appears to be a preemptive action, MCA also asked the court for declarative relief from allegations that it believes Scorpio may make against MCA in what the company described in a statement as a threatened and “frivolous” lawsuit.

Among the allegations that the complaint says Scorpio may make in an impending suit is that a number of MCA Records executives engaged in a pattern of racketeering with figures who acted as MCA agents in the 1984 sale of 1 million so-called cut-out records to Scorpio and that the executives and agents converted $350,000 of Scorpio’s money to their own use.

Cut-outs are records sold by manufacturers to budget distributors after sales have dwindled.

MCA claims in its suit that any such contentions by Scorpio are “totally baseless and without merit.”

Scorpio attorney Dennis Eisman said Wednesday that the company intends to file a suit in Philadelphia today making many of the allegations that MCA denies in its suit.

“We’ve been trying for months to settle this matter with them, and I find it very curious that they never accused Scorpio of counterfeiting until after we gave them a copy of our proposed complaint against them,” Eisman said.

Eisman claims that Scorpio owner John Gervasoni has been cooperating with prosecutors in federal grand jury investigations in Los Angeles and Newark, N.J., that are believed to be looking into the cut-out record industry.

Last year, MCA turned over documents to the FBI in Newark that it said relate to a massive counterfeiting of some of its records.