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Incentive Capital of Utah took ownership last month of the B-rated flick about a sister who is “one Bad Mother.” Yet two weeks after Incentive Capital foreclosed and assumed Camelot Distribution Group’s titles because of an allegedly soured loan, Camelot filed a mass copyright lawsuit (.pdf) on behalf of Nude Nuns claiming it owned the rights.
In a Thursday story, Wired.com featured Camelot Distribution Group’s legal tactics as part of a nationwide practice by small-time movie houses trying to extract legal settlements — in the $3,000 range — from as many as 130,000 alleged BitTorrent downloaders across the country. The story questioned Camelot’s and others’ legal methods, but assumed Camelot owned the film.
“They don’t presently own that film,” Joseph Pia, Incentive Capital’s attorney, said Friday in a telephone interview from his Utah office. “We are the legal title owners. ”
He said Incentive Capital is sending a cease-and-desist letter to Camelot demanding that it drop the copyright lawsuit.
“They’re holding themselves out as the owner of a title they don’t own,” Pia said. Incentive is also suing Camelot for $2 million on contract breach allegations (.pdf).
For its part, Camelot claims the ownership switch was a “usurpation of its assets,” (.pdf) according to court documents.
The flap concerns a $650,000 loan Incentive provided to Camelot last year, which was used by Camelot to acquire the rights to what court documents sometimes called the “Liberation Assets” or “Distribution Assets.” Those assets include the Nude Nuns movie and a dozen other titles you’ve never heard of.
Incentive claims Camelot defaulted on the loan.
So on Feb. 21, Incentive took title to the movies (.pdf) after purchasing them for $200,000 at a public auction (.pdf) held by Incentive in Utah. Incentive claims it had the right to auction them off because they were the collateral for the loan it claims was in default.
“Incentive has no right to the collateral,” Camelot countered in its own lawsuit against Incentive. Camelot also said Incentive declared a loan default “to obtain control of the Liberation Assets.”
Two weeks after Incentive took title to Nude Nuns, Camelot lodged a federal copyright lawsuit in Los Angeles on behalf of Nude Nuns, and telling the court it was the rightful owner. Camelot is based in Irvine, California.
In that copyright lawsuit, Camelot demanded a federal judge order ISPs from around the country to provide Camelot with the names of the 5,865 account holders whose IP addresses did the downloading.
A hearing on that issue is scheduled for April 13. It is likely to be delayed or abandoned pending the outcome of the Incentive-Camelot brouhaha.
A Camelot attorney, Scott Hervey, said in a Wednesday telephone interview that the goal of the copyright lawsuit was to “lessen the severe economic impact that illegal downloading is having on my clients.”
Hervey did not respond for comment Friday after The Hollywood Reporter disclosed Incentive’s lawsuit against Camelot.
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