LOS ANGELES — A federal judge has ordered the parent company of Mallcom.com to pay Evil Angel and its producers $243,000 after a settlement deal was breached.
Both companies and the producers reached an accord late last year over charges that Mallcom operators infringed on Evil Angel content by allowing complete downloads of its movies on PornStar.com.
Industry attorney Gill Sperlein told XBIZ yesterday that the judge's order came about shortly after John Stagliano's studio and producers reached the deal with Direct Distributions Enterprises Inc. — the parent company of Mallcom. com, BlingBucks.com and PornStar.com.
"The parties reached a settlement with a monthly payment schedule and a provision that if they did not make payments a stipulated judgment would be entered," said Sperlein, who represented Stagliano and producers. "But only made one payment. Thus the judgment was entered."
The suit, initiated in June 2012, alleged that PornStar.com without permission sold monthly memberships to stream and download movies from Evil Angel's catalog of licensed content after company officials approached Stagliano execs and requested to license its movies for distribution through its video-on-demand section of Mallcom.com. Stagliano execs declined the offer.
But in July 2009, the same execs discovered Direct Distributions had reproduced Evil Angel movies, placing them on PornStar.com under an "unlimited consumption" sales model.
The alleged infringement includes 19 Evil Angel films from directors Giacinto Fusco, Jon Rutkowski, Joseph Nassivera, Carlton Shurman, John Leslie Nuzzon and Michelle Kelly, as well as Gilbert Grosso’s Christoph Clark line.
Direct Distributions, however, contended in pretrial documents that it had a Mallcom.com licensing deal with director Grosso.
But Grosso, who agreed to video-on-demand distribution via Mallcom. com, said in testimony that "he didn't contemplate and would not have accepted an invitation" to license his works through PornStar.com under an unlimited consumption model.
On Jan. 6, U.S. District Judge Philip Gutierrez signed off on an order for Stagliano and the producers to collect $243,000, the settlement amount less the first payment.
The suit waged by plaintiffs originally was seeking $4.85 million — statutory damages of $150,000 for each infringed work, plus $2 million for infringement of the Evil Angel trademark.
