Deadmau5 Files $10 Million Lawsuit Against Play Records

EDM superstar Deadmau5 (Joel Zimmerman) has filed a lawsuit claiming tens of millions of dollars in damages over unauthorized remixes and mashups that he asserts have violated among other things, his moral rights.

According to the statement of claim (read here), when Deadmau5 was just getting off the ground as an artist in 2006, he was engaged to do two remixes for Brown. Later, he signed music publishing and personal management agreements with her company.

By 2007, Deadmau5 had relocated to London and hooked up with a different management firm, which was part of an entertainment group that later joined forces with Jay Z's Roc Nation. There, Deadmau5 experienced growing success and so he decided to sever ties with Brown. The price of doing so, after a dispute erupted, was Deadmau5 paying a sum of money and assigning Play Records ownership of his early recordings and compositions including his first hit, "Faxing Berlin."

The settlement agreement is said in the new lawsuit to have outlined how Brown's company could use those works. Specifically, it's alleged that the agreement required Deadmau5's "prior written consent" for any “new” remix entailing the change of melody and/or lyrics. Further, the lawsuit states "the Settlement Agreement expressly provided that Zimmerman did not waive his moral rights with respect to any so-called future remixes — if any were to be made — because by definition any future remix had not been created yet.

Now, six years later after the settlement came, Play Records has allegedly released sound recordings of remixes of Deadmau5's early work without his approval and "not of good technical and commercial quality."

Deadmau5 has now filed a lawsuit over this and is asserting breach of contract, infringement of moral rights and trademark claims. The latter comes because the defendant is described as using registered designs and other marks of Deadmau5's, passing off works as his own and marketing old recordings as new ones. The EDM superstar is demanding $10 million in damages on each cause of action.