Mediation has failed between Jay-Z’s Roc-A-Fella Records and Damon Dash, who both claim the intellectual property rights to Reasonable Doubt.
Damon Dash is being sued by Roc-A-Fella, and in a new filing, the lawyers for the label claim that the issue is nowhere near a resolution as they’ve “reached an impasse” in attempts to settle the case.
According to Billboard on Tuesday, the record label will be going forward with the lawsuit to secure victory against Dash. Dame Dash ran into problems with Roc-A-Fella last year after he attempted to sell his share of rights to the album as an NFT. The label was successful in being awarded an injunction blocking him from selling anything.
In March, they were engaging in talks to resolve the issue, but Alex Spiro representing Roc-A-Fella told a court on Monday (May 16) that those talks have been unproductive, and the label will now be filing for summary judgement for a declaration of ownership of the project as well as a permanent injunction to stop Dash from dealing with the project.
Billboard reported Dash had admitted during litigation proceedings that he had no right to Reasonable Doubt, which is the basis for Roc-A-Fella’s lawsuit.
Last year, the record label filed a lawsuit against Dash, who is one of its co-founders, claiming that he planned to auction the album copyrights on a platform called SuperFarm as an NFT, or Non-Fungible Token.
SuperFarm had canceled the sale after lawyers wrote to them, but Roc-a-Fella’s lawsuit claimed that Dash was looking to find another party to conduct the “improper transaction.”
In the meantime, Damon Dash has maintained that he has a share in the project, which is Jay-Z’s debut project. He said he wanted to sell the copyrights after Jay-Z and the label tried to lowball him on the price. Even though he claims to have a share of the copyright, the record company has denied the label executive’s claim and says that the label holds all of the rights in the project.
Jay-Z and Damon Dash have had a rocky relationship over the years since their days of being business partners in the 1990s. The rap mogul and the label exec have not been on speaking terms for years and now are going at each other in court.
