Jimi Hendrix estate goes to court following royalty claim from former Experience collaborators

completemusicupdate.com:

The Jimi Hendrix estate and Sony Music have filed legal papers with the courts in New York seeking a declaratory judgement that agreements reached with other members of the Jimi Hendrix Experience in the early 1970s are still in force.

The move follows threats in the UK by the estates of those former Experience members – Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell – to sue for supposedly unpaid royalties.The agreements that the New York courts are being asked to confirm were signed by Redding and Mitchell in 1973 and 1974 respectively, and were the result of negotiations that occurred following Hendrix’s death in 1970.Under those agreements, Redding and Mitchell basically gave up any copyright or royalty claims in relation to recordings made by the Jimi Hendrix Experience in return for “significant monetary consideration”.

The so called ‘release agreements’ also included a commitment to never sue the Hendrix estate or its successors.According to the companies that manage the Hendrix Estate – Experience Hendrix and Authentic Hendrix – neither Redding nor Mitchell ever raised any subsequent issues with those agreements until their deaths in 2003 and 2008 respectively.

And, indeed, at various points they actually collaborated with the Hendrix companies on different projects.However, last month two UK-based limited companies representing the estates of Redding and Mitchell sent a cease-and-desist letter to the London office of Sony Music, the major being the worldwide licensee of the recordings controlled by the Hendrix companies.