Charges Include: Trademark Counterfeiting, Trademark Infringement, Copyright Infringement, False Advertising and Fraud.
by Ed Murray
Dateline: New York
Making good on his previous warnings, on January 15, 2016 Gary Null & Associates started off the New Year by filing a massive lawsuit against the Pacifica Foundation, Bertold Reimers, Lydia Brazon, Margy Wilkinson and two other individuals. The civil suit was filed in the United States District Court Eastern District of New York. The Lawsuit charges the defendants with 13 separate causes of action, the copyright and trademark infringements being very serious. Click Here to read the lawsuit, which was posted on the blog WBAI NowThen.
Ian Masters, KFPK programmer who was warned he would be fired for mentioning the name of the acting director of Pacifica, Lydia Brazon, can rest assured that her name has now been mentioned, as a defendant in a federal lawsuit.
Null said he had provided somewhere around 20,000 premiums to Pacifica over the years, but his reputation was damaged because the defendants not only failed to send out many premiums to subscribers, but actually made spurious copies of his copyrighted and trademarked material, including multimedia on which the defendants pasted on false labels, making it seem the product was original from Gary Null.
Null, not only seeks to stop the defendants from any future fraud of counterfeiting his products, but asked the court to force Pacifica to keep any fund drive funds in a separate trust fund until such time as the premium is mailed to the donor or subscriber. This would be music to the ears of the many folks who have complained about donating to various Pacifica radio stations and not receiving their premium as promised. After supplying Pacifica stations with the hottest premiums for 39 years, Null has had enough of this behavior, and has discussed many of these issues on his Progressive Radio Show.
It remains to be seen what action Pacifica will take on this matter. Defending against these charges will cost many thousands of dollars, money that needs to go to pay other bills. Huge deficits are looming over some of the stations, including WBAI in New York, where a lot of the alleged illegal activity took place. WBAI also allegedly owes around $700,000 to the Empire State building for transmitter rental. Pacifica is in a state of turmoil, with contending factions in open warfare. Many fear that the entire network is doomed because of bad management, which has led to the loss of thousands of supporters and listeners. A lawsuit like this could be the beginning of the end to the once grand and admired anti-War network.