“Black Ice”: Drake, Lebron James and Future Sued for $10 Million Over Rights to Hockey Documentary

(Image: Screen Capture/YouTube/Stake)

How the Colored Hockey League changed NHL forever | Hockey Culture

According to Carl Campanile and Priscilla DeGregory of the New York Post, Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James, as well as hip hop artists Drake and Future, are being sued for $10 million by former NBA executive director Billy Hunter.

Hunter allegedly wants a share of the profits from the documentary “Black Ice,” which came out in 2014.

Hunter claims in the lawsuit that he had sole intellectual property rights to create the documentary. “Black Ice” was a film about the Colored Hockey League, that existed from 1895 to 1925.

“While the defendants LeBron James, Drake and Maverick Carter [LeBron’s business partner] are internationally known and renowned in their respective fields of basketball and music, it does not afford them the right to steal another’s intellectual property,” Hunter’s attorney, Larry Hutcher, stated in the lawsuit.

“Black Ice” is based on George and Darril Fosty’s book “Black Ice: The Lost History of the Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes, 1895 to 1925.” George and Darril Fosty have also been named as defendants in the lawsuit. Hunter claims that the book’s writers reached an agreement with James and Drake behind their backs when they had already paid $265,000 for the film’s rights.

“I don’t think they believed the property rights would be litigated,” Hunter told the New York Post. “They thought I would go away. They gambled.”

According to the lawsuit, the Fostys recognizes that Hunter owned the film rights, but makes the argument that the “Black Ice” documentary was a “separate entity” that was not covered by their agreement. Hunter, for his part, he claims to have paid $250,000 for “exclusive worldwide rights” to any “audiovisual” versions of the story.

Hunter’s lawsuit also named James’ entertainment companies, The Springhill Company and Uninterrupted Canada, Drake’s Dreamcrew Entertainment, and the Frostys’ Stryker Indigo publishing firm and First Take Entertainment.

via

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