This page documents the actual lawsuit of Matthew Katz v Napster....This is also the page where I will be posting the actual court documents from the early It's A Beautiful Day case and anything else related to Matthew Katz...It's pretty scattered right now, but I hope to clean this up sometime in the future.



Matthew Katz is the owner of the San Francisco Sound label, on which he releases It's A Beautiful Day's first two albums, and Moby Grape's first two albums, among others....For a comparison of Matthew Katz own website, click here
The following is the truth about San Francisco Sound and Matthew Katz

The court documents for It's A Beautiful Day have recently been moved to Los Angeles Superior Court,The new case can be found here...Enter case #BC230859
....If anyone in Los Angeles can help me get a few copies of these documents, it will be greatly appreciated...Email me if you can help..

email

Also, I've received word that Matthew Katz, the former manager of It's A Beautiful Day is attempting to put together a new It's A Beautiful Day group..While this might be legal because he owns the trademark, it will definately not have any of the original band members..If you see this new group, let us know, as this might create alot of confusion with the fans.

reference timeline for the old Moby Grape website

New, May 25, 2001----A brand new lawsuit has been filed against Matthew Katz and San Francisco Sound by the estate of Alexander Skip Spence..click here for details and the complete lawsuit



Initial(first part)filing of Katz v Napster(1st 14 pages of initial complaint
More court documents related to Katz via Moby Grape..
1st Appellate decision (Spence v Katz) from Oct 30,1997

Depositions of Glendon Miskel and Daniel Christenson, attorneys for the Grape and Katz
Another deposition a week later by the same two attorneys, plus another..Richard Idell docket sheet(Clainos).Two Jefferson Airplane decisions related to Katz, Marty Balin(Buchwald V Katz)in the California Supreme Court and an earlier decision in that case
plus an example of attorney blather in the Grape situation.
A four page example of the claims of Katz to Moby Grapes publishing rights. page 1 2 3 4
Moby Grape order-1995

Matthew Katz sues a whole lot of people for defamation over the internet(part one) and this is part 2(the exhibits-known as the Matthew Katz Legacy Page)

This JPEG scanned article is why I am perfectly within my rights to post this legal information

and part two of this article

Here's another article explaining the extreme importance of keeping the court documents publicly available, as per the 1st Amendment


Interview with Matthew Katz-Goldmine-1993

This seems to work a little better(second version of Katz interview)

just how many people has Katz sued?

Matthew Katz sues Napster and a whole bunch of other people

The first part of the actual intial complaint against Napster(first 14 pages)

Part two of the initial actual complaint against Napster(pages 15-24)

The following is Napster's response to Katz..The quality of the copies weren't quite good enough for an OCR scan so it'll have to be a jpeg scan of each page, one at a time...It really starts to get interesting from page 16-20 in Napsters affirmative defense where Napster takes apart Katz' claims by asserting "misuse of copyrights, abandonment of trademarks, non exclusive use of marks, unclean hands", etc...Starting off with page one, JPEG scan of the cover sheet of(page one) Napster's response to Matthew Katz' complaint

Page 2-20(complete response)(so far) page2--page3--page4--page5--page6--page7--page8--page9--page10--page11--page12--page13--page14--page15--page15--page16--page17--page18--page19--page20

bddpin.bmp - 80046 Bytes


Photo of Matthew Katz, owner of the San Francisco Sound label, and Grape attorney Glendon Miskel leaving court at 3:30pm, Friday, August 18th, 2000
I took this photo of them leaving the courtroom on a public sidewalk....Matthew Katz is in the tan blazer and cowboy hat

Some reference points regarding invasion of privacy, posting photo's on the internet and "right to publicity"...In this case, on this web page,these photo's still appear to be legal, because I am not profiting in any way from them..This website is non-commercial reporting and is thus protected under the US Constitution...For example see this website explaining this "right to privacy"" concept

Another excellent legal analysis of the First Amendment vs "Right Of Publicity" in terms of fan websites

and still another excellent overview

a second photo from behind and a third photo taken on my bike...This photo is taken on my bike and I tried to cut in front of them in the middle of the street and get a front photo...You can see Mr Katz trying to hide behind Glendon Miskel

an Airplane decision before the California Supreme Court


This next link is highly relevant to It's A Beautiful Day's situation with the name game.. This is a very recent decision in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that concerns the band members of Steppenwolf who have been fighting over control of the name

Related cases of Matthew Katz..Docket sheets filed-Federal Court in Los Angeles...Katz v Peter Lewis

Jpeg scans of docket sheets of a huge case in Los Angeles Federal Court against many record companies and outlets....Matthew Katz sued darn near every major label in existence..Here are the docket sheet fro this case..The docketing info contains the defendants and attorneys on the first ten pages, including the FBI...Pages 11-46 contain the actual docketing info of the filings..--page1--page2..--page3--page4..--page5--page6..--page7--page8..--page9--page10..--page11--page12..--page13--page14..--page15--page16..--page17--page18..--page19--page20..--page21--page22..--page23--page24..--page25--page26..--page27--page28..--page29--page30..--page31--page32..--page33--page34..--page35--page36..--page37--page38..--page39--page40..--page41--page2..--page43--page44..--page45--page46



Finally, for the first time in history, the actual docketing info from the It's A Beautiful Day case all the way back to the beginning in 1968 posted on the net....This first docket sheet is from the very beginning and shows that Katz sued the band on November 4th, 1968 and filed for an injunction against the band over use of the name....The docket shows that on May 5th, 1969, the court ruled that "plaintiffs(Katz) application for preliminary injunction ordered DENIED!"...And "order to show cause discharged".. That means that the band actually won their right to use the name "It's A Beautiful Day, in 1969...It was then that the band went to Columbia records and recorded their first album and the rest is history... Here is the actual docket sheet from the microfilm of the Superior Court, San Francisco

The second docket sheet shows that something happened between 1969 and 1973, because Katz came back and won a judgement against the band dated 7-16-1973 for $188,018.00.... Here is the second docket sheet

Now, as of November 8th, 2000, for the first time in history, that actual decisions from 1969 and 1973 are now available for widespread public scrutiny via the internet.... The first two pages is the order denying Katz lawsuit for a preliminary injunction against the band

Here is the second page from that decision

The next important decision is in 1973, when Katz came back and won a judgement against the band

Here is page 2 of that decision

New(April 30,2001) The latest renewal of judgement of the Katz v LaFlamme case dated November 1st, 2000, Los Angeles Superior Court...In this filing, LaFlamme actually pays Katz...
The specific wording is as follows.."Judgement Creditor David LaFlamme made payments in the sum of $80.00, thereby reducing the Judgement from $927,880.05 to 927,800.05."

WOW!!!, sounds like David LaFlamme is well on his way to satisfying the judgement..If David keeps this up, he could wipe out this court case in about 4000 years!!!
The following are the jpeg scans from these actual court documents..Pages 1-6, (plus the cover sheet)

cover sheet, page 1, page 2, page 3, page 4, page 5, page 6

cover sheet of Katz v BertelsmanThis lawsuit made the news because Katz is also suing all thirty eight million Napster users

part one of the new Katz v Bertelsman case
part two

part 3 and part 4

Miscellenious court filings...new filing, Jefferson Airplane dispute cover sheet filed June, 22,2000 in US District Court, SF

Here is the complete text of the above lawsuit in OCR form.

The worlds strangest lawsuit?
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