Thursday, January 19, 2006

Ruling in Spanish court case

Acccording to a story on PR Newswire, Tom Waits has won his law suit in Spain, establishing his moral rights in a case brought against car manufacturer Volkswagen-Audi and a Spanish production company for adapting one of Waits' songs and impersonating his voice in a television commercial. The source of this item is listed as ,,Tom Waits''.

The BBC quotes a Waits' spokesman as saying the singer received ,,several thousand euros'' compensation from the car firm and advert producer. A quote from the man himself after the ruling: ,,Now they understand the words to the song better. It wasn't Innocent When You Scheme, it was Innocent When You Dream.''

On January 19, 1993, The U.S. Supreme Court upheld a $2.5 million award to Tom Waits in the Frito-Lay case (pdf) over use of a ``sound alike`` artist to mimic his voice in a 1988 television commercial.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I think it's beautiful poetic justice that he has made more off of stopping people from commercializing his music than he would have by letting them in the first place. Well done ya brilliant varied mule!