Royalties

It was an improbable Cinderella story. "The Shack," William Paul Young's novel about a man rediscovering lost faith after the murder of his 5-year-old daughter, started out as a manuscript no one would touch. Finally, pastors Wayne Jacobsen and Brad Cummings discovered the book and created a start-up, Windblown Media, to publish it. The novel sold a million copies for them in the first year, eventually ending up at No. 1 on the New York Times' trade paperback bestseller list. Then Hachette Book Group got involved.

Muhammad Ali turns 70 on Tuesday, and for many of those 70 years, he has had us all on the ropes. To say he is merely a famous boxer is to say the sky is always blue. There are so many sides to him his nickname should be Octagon. Now, he is revered. Passage of time softens and endears. He is ill, and has been since 1984, when he first received a diagnosis of Parkinson's. That was just three years after his final fight, when he made one last, mostly pathetic, effort to convince the world he was still "the Greatest.

A prolific inventor who has spent more than a decade proving toys aren't all fun and games has been awarded millions of dollars by a federal jury, which said toy giant Mattel Inc. infringed on his patent with its popular "Hot Wheels." "I am floating on cloud nine," 66-year-old Jerome Lemelson said Friday, a day after the judgment. "My hope is that as a result of it, toy inventors will get a fair shake from the industry." The jury awarded Lemelson $24.

Work on a planned museum at the World Trade Center has ground to a halt because of a financial dispute, and there is now no possibility it will open on time next year, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Thursday. The underground museum commemorating victims of the 9/11 attacks was scheduled to open in September on the 11th anniversary of the disaster, a year after the opening of a memorial at the site that has already drawn 1 million visitors. But in recent months, the National September 11 Memorial & Museum foundation has been fighting with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey over who is responsible for paying millions of dollars in infrastructure costs related to the project.

By all rights, Deborah Gregory should be sitting pretty: As a first-time author, she wrote the Cheetah Girls novels, a bubbly, 16-book series that became hugely popular with American tweens and teens. And she appeared to hit an even bigger jackpot when she sold the dramatic rights to the Disney Channel. Her breezy, street-smart tales of five girls chasing pop music careers were turned into two hit television movies, and a third is now being filmed in India.

Designer Sandra Garratt is still searching for the pipeline from her million-dollar ideas to the bank. Her first wardrobe invention, the modular fashion line Units, is an international clothing chain that grosses about $75 million annually. Her second brainchild, Multiples, is expected to gross $60 million worldwide this year. Garratt's worth? "Less than zero."

It is unbelievable that The Times could run a cover story on the subject of royalties ("The Bucks Start Here," by Diane Haithman, Nov. 5) and not mention the assault on federal copyright law currently being waged by Republicans in Congress via HR 789, the so-called "Fairness in Musical Licensing Act of 1995" and its companion bill in the Senate, S 1137. The intent of these bills is to declare music "incidental" to thousands of the businesses who currently license music, thus exempting them from payment.

A federal jury in Los Angeles ruled Friday that Eminem's music royalties don't change just because a song has been sold online. The decision prevents, at least for now, an upending of the music industry that could have greatly changed the financial relationship between record labels and artists, in which labels have long commanded most of the proceeds from album sales.

TECHNOLOGY * The U.S. Copyright Office refused to suspend the requirement that over-the-air radio stations pay royalties to labels and artists for the songs they broadcast over the Internet. As a consequence, stations that simulcast on the Web will have to pay four years' worth of back royalties Oct. 20. The National Assn. of Broadcasters and seven major radio chains have challenged the royalties requirement in court, and they sought the suspension because their appeal still is pending.

ICN Pharmaceuticals Inc. said Monday that it plans to reinvest a large part of its royalties from a therapy for the chronic liver disease hepatitis C in its research and development program. The Costa Mesa drug maker said in a press release that it will invest in a program to develop its existing library of nucleosides and nucleotides and in new initiatives. Nucleosides and nucleotides are subunits of DNA. Schering-Plough Corp. has rights to market ICN's oral ribavirin for hepatitis C.

A bill introduced Thursday in both houses of Congress would force large art auction houses to pay a 7% royalty on sales of artworks costing more than $10,000. It would apply only to works by living artists, and dead ones whose works haven't yet entered the public domain, which occurs 70 years after the creator's death. Artists and their heirs wouldn't be the only ones getting paid. The bill, which amends existing copyright law to provide for America's first nationwide royalty on sales of visual art, calls for funneling half the proceeds to a new federally supervised fund that would help nonprofit museums buy artworks by living, U.S.-based artists.

The watercolor portrait of the king is not exactly subtle, but it is pretty. Amar Singh II, the ruler of the Mewar kingdom in India, fills the cloth, his coral-colored gown billowing to the edges of the painting. One hand grips a bejeweled sword, while the other delicately holds a flower toward his nose. A golden halo surrounds his feathered turban. After all, he could trace his lineage back thousands of years to the god-king Rama. The painting, from the 18th century, is an icon of power — and a fitting symbol for a new show at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco.

For decades, gallery owners in California have wished that the state's Resale Royalty Act of 1976, which provides artists with 5% of the sales price of artworks when they are resold under certain conditions, would just go away. While some dealers follow the law and pay the royalty to artists, others do not. But it's hard to track what artists may be owed in either case, given the difficulty of getting the galleries to disclose information on their sales. Now, working to force some disclosures as well as recover money, the foundation of the late abstract painter Sam Francis is the lead plaintiff in class-action lawsuits filed Tuesday against nine galleries in Northern and Southern California.

TCW Group Inc.'s expert witness said the asset management firm is owed $81.7 million in "reasonable royalties" from DoubleLine Capital after a jury's finding in September that DoubleLine misappropriated TCW's trade secrets. The use of TCW's trade secrets, including portfolio management systems, would have allowed DoubleLine to avoid risks and delays getting its business operating, Brad Cornell, the witness, told Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Carl J. West on Tuesday. "TCW's trade secrets are based on years, if not decades, of actual experience," Cornell said under questioning by TCW lawyer John Quinn.

An acclaimed Los Angeles artist who has sued a prominent local collector to enforce the California "resale royalty" law could get his day in court long before the plaintiffs in class-action suits filed last week against Christie's and Sotheby's. Artist Mark Grotjahn has sued collector Dean Valentine to recover a 5% royalty for three artworks that Valentine resold. The case, which has been quietly working its way through the courts for nearly a year, now has a trial date in March.

New York painter Chuck Close, L.A. artist Laddie John Dill and the estate of L.A. sculptor Robert Graham are plaintiffs in a pair of class-action lawsuits filed on Tuesday against the New York operations of Sotheby's and Christie's, alleging that the auction houses violated the California Resale Royalty Act. The 1977 California statute, a rare attempt in the U.S. to provide visual artists with a financial cut of appreciating artworks they made...

Under pressure from an influential lawmaker, record labels and Internet broadcasters moved closer Tuesday to a compromise on royalties that could help small online radio stations stay in business. The record labels' proposals, however, struck some Webcasters as presenting a painful choice: They could stay small and qualify for reduced royalties, or grow and be hit with fees that only the largest companies could afford to pay. House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.

TCW Group Inc.'s expert witness said the asset management firm is owed $81.7 million in "reasonable royalties" from DoubleLine Capital after a jury's finding in September that DoubleLine misappropriated TCW's trade secrets. The use of TCW's trade secrets, including portfolio management systems, would have allowed DoubleLine to avoid risks and delays getting its business operating, Brad Cornell, the witness, told Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Carl J. West on Tuesday. "TCW's trade secrets are based on years, if not decades, of actual experience," Cornell said under questioning by TCW lawyer John Quinn.

He was a forlorn-looking figure, dressed in a rumpled gray raincoat that was shiny with dirt, like a mechanic's apron. The woman sitting with him, at the Original Pantry restaurant in downtown Los Angeles, ate silently. The man appeared to be in his late 70s, his appearance hinting at homelessness, or something close to it. It was 1978, and as my brother and I stole glances at him while we ate our dinner, it was hard to believe that this man was once touted as one of the greatest living pianists — a man who drew comparisons to his famous countryman, composer and pianist Franz Liszt.

With royal fever still burning in Los Angeles in the wake of Prince William and wife Catherine's visit, it's natural to ask, "What did the coveted couple drink?" It turns out that mixologist (and Neve Luxury Ice founder) Michel Dozois — who created the artsy cocktail scene for Stark Bar at LACMA — was asked to make cocktails for William and Catherine at the black-tie British Academy of Film and Television Arts gala that took place downtown at the Belasco Theater over the weekend.