By Donna Goodison
PUBLISHED: April 4, 2008 at 12:00 AM EDT | UPDATED: November 17, 2018 at 12:00 AM EST
The court fight over ownership of four days of video footage of the late John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono heated up this week with a counterclaim filed by the Beatles’ widow.
Ono – who bought the black-and-white footage for $300,000 after it was allegedly stolen from Lawrence-based World Wide Video – claims she’s the rightful owner of the videotapes and their copyrights. World Wide maintains that Lawrence attorney John Buck and an accomplice made the sale without their approval, forging their signatures to seal the deal.
Filed in Massachusetts District Court, Ono’s response answers a copyright infringement lawsuit filed against her last month by World Wide, which is seeking to regain the tapes. Ono asked the court to block World Wide from showing its copies of the footage.
World Wide purchased 24 original videotapes and, allegedly, their copyrights from Anthony Cox, Ono’s husband prior to Lennon, for $125,000 in 2000. Cox shot the intimate footage in early 1970.
“We don’t have any hostility or anger toward (Ono),” World Wide co-owner Ray Thomas said. “This is strictly a business matter.”
World Wide, which acknowledges it lacks the required releases from Lennon and Ono to show the footage commercially for financial gain, wants to show a documentary that it produced from the tapes for educational purposes.
Highlights of the raw footage include Lennon sharing his political views, Lennon and Ono interacting at their Tittenhurst estate in England, and Lennon smoking pot with self-styled black revolutionary and civil rights activist Michael X, who was hanged for murder two years later.
“John also gives a tour of London that’s a little bawdy,” World Wide co-owner John Fallon said. “(The footage) culminates with the ‘Top of the Pops’ rehearsal . . . where they kind of premiered ‘Instant Karma.’ ”
World Wide also bought 10 copies of the footage, according to its lawsuit. The suit also names Anthony Pagola, a Florida man alleged to be Buck’s accomplice and whom World Wide is suing for copyright infringement, civil conspiracy and fraud.
Buck had represented John Messina, the New Hampshire man accused of stealing the videotapes and copies from World Wide, when it sued him in Middlesex Superior Court suit in 2000. Under a settlement, Messina agreed to return the copies and use his best efforts to obtain the originals.
Buck denied the allegations last month, telling the Herald that he didn’t know how Ono got the tapes. But her counterclaim refers to Buck as World Wide’s lawyer.
Two sale documents filed with Ono’s counterclaim show mirror-image signatures of World Wide owners Fallon and Robert Grenier.
“I signed nothing,” said Fallon, who believes his signature was digitally copied and maintains World Wide would never have sold the tapes for $300,000. “Not in a million years. It’s much too low.”
Source: https://www.bostonherald.com/2008/04/04/battle-for-john-and-yoko/
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