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LATINO FAN CLUB FILES SUIT AGAINST WEBMASTER FOR TRADMARK VIOLATION
By: Paul Goldberg, Staff Writer 02-18-08 12:00 a.m. PDT
JRL has learned that the Original Latino Fan Club has claimed in a suit filed on January 11, 2008 that its webmaster, Robert “Jimi” Sweet, CEO of Streetlife Studios/Big City Baby, were renewing the domain name (latinofanclub.com) in May of 2007, registered his own company name instead of the Latino Fan Club.
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Thereby, in effect, becoming “owner” of the Latino Fan Club web site domain name. At that time, also, Mr. Sweet stopped payments of web site Memberships sold that were due the Latino Fan Club organization.
According to Dana Bryan, founder and CEO of the Latino Fan Club, the last check was returned “Insufficient Funds”. Numerous emails, phone voice messages and letters have not been returned. In January of this year, Big City Baby disconnected the Official Latino Fan Club web site, substituting its own page with the Latino Fan Club logotype at the top of the page, and the line: “free pictures of gay black and latino men”.
None of the pictures were created by the Latino Fan Club, and the use of the L.F.C. logotype was a clear Trade Mark violation. Founder and owner of the Latino Fan Club, Dana Bryan told JRL.. “Jimi and I shared a verbal agreement regarding my website for years, and I generously paid him 50% of all revenue collected by CCBill for access to my web site in exchange for his services as my webmaster and hosting my web site on his computers.At no time and in no way was Mr. Sweet ever more than a paid employee.
I had no reason not to trust the man, and then this happens. Sadly, he has refused to contact me, nor given me any explanation for his actions.”
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Once this situation came to light, Mr. Bryan has received emails from other web site owners who had the same experience with Mr. Sweet. When one enters whereboyshang.com or southernthugs.com, on the internet, you are taken to the Big City Baby “street life” web site. And when one enters www.latinofanclub.com, you are also connected to the “street life” web site, causing much confusion for the thousands of Latino Fan Club fans.
Until this situation is corrected, the new Authorized, Official web site of the Latino Fan Club is: www.TheOriginalLatinoFanClub.com.
JRL contacted CEO and Founder of Street life Studios Robert Sweet to get his comments on this lawsuit and he was more than willing to tell his side of the story directly to JRL.
Robert Sweet , CEO of Street life Studios and Big City Baby told JRL exclusively ...."the Latino Fan Club web site latinofanclub.com was a joint project between Bryan Services and Big City Baby/Street life Studios. The domain name in question was registered by Big City Baby in 1997 and since then, Big City Baby has paid all yearly registration fees, monthly hosting fees, and paid for all server maintenance and upgrades.Bryan Services provided movies re purposed from its video collection and pictures from its magazine archive, while Street life Studios provided nightly live web cam models, a chat room, forums and affiliations and partnerships with its other projects."
Sweet continues to tell JRL, "For reasons I will detail below, the relationship ended in 2007 and Bryan Services now feels it is entitled to the domain name Big City Baby has owned for almost eleven years. Oddly enough, the lawsuit Bryan Services filed does not mention the domain name conflict at all; the small claims suit is specifically seeking revenue Bryan Services feels Big City Baby/Street Life Studios owes it for web site memberships and recovery of an unpaid check".
In June 2006, Big City Baby received notification from the New York State (NYS) Department of Taxation and Finance that there is a Tax Compliance Levy against Bryan Services. Big City Baby was required to transfer any revenue generated by the web site to NYS. Big City Baby's counter suit will prove that Bryan Services knowingly sabotaged any money-making opportunities the web site project would have had simply because the levy would prevent Bryan Services from receiving funds from the project.
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"Bryan Services ceased updating the membership area of the web site, and instead focused its efforts on promoting and selling its line of videos. Bryan Services altered the web site to redirect traffic to a site not owned by Big City Baby/Street life Studios and gave specific instructions on how members could cancel their memberships despite the fact that the web site was fully operational and members had complete access to paid content. The web site has operated at a loss for several months" sweet told JRL.
Our own Executive Editor n' Chief Rudy Nava, ran into my office to give me the latest info on this case. The Latino Fan Club has released this statement in response to Big City Baby/Street Life Productions;
"Oddly enough, Mr. Sweet does not mention that the temporary tax compliance requirement was satisfied and paid in June of 2006, and then Mr. Sweet resumed sending revenue payments to the Latino Fan Club until he was able to register his company as owner of the LFC website in 2007. Only at this time did Mr. Sweet stop paying LFC its share of membership revenue, thus making the issue of taxes owed irrelevant." Mr. Bryan told JRL Exclusively...
Bryan added "Further, Big City Baby has never promoted the LFC website in any way including, at the least, a link on his "streetlife" and other websites. His contention that LFC ceased updating its membership area will be proven false by the numerous emails sent to Big City Baby on this issue."
We'll keep an eye on this story as it develops but for now, make sure to visit the new web site for the Original Latino Fan Club as well as streetlifestudios.com
