White Plains firm accused of illegal sales of legendary music recordings

A UK company that says it owns the rights to the legendary Audio Fidelity Sound Recordings labels claims that a White Plains firm is illegally licensing and distributing the works.

Charly Acquisitions Ltd. and Charly Trademarks Ltd., based in the Bailiwick of Guernsey in the Channel Islands, accused 43 North Broadway LLC of trademark infringement and counterfeiting, in a complaint filed Nov. 7 in U.S. District Court, White Plains.

“As a result of defendants’ brazen conduct, wholesale unauthorized copies of the Audio Fidelity Sound Recordings have entered the stream of commerce with no way to prevent their viral downstream dissemination,” the complaint states, “diverting royalty streams away from plaintiffs (and) stealing the fruits of their monetary investments.”

43 North Broadway did not respond to a message asking for its side of the story.

Charly says Audio Fidelity’s mid-20th Century catalog includes thousands of historically significant recordings by jazz greats such as Charlie Parker and Louis Armstrong, Latin artists such as Charlie and Eddie Palmieri, classical works and more.

43 North Broadway — the address of a church three blocks away from the firm’s actual base in an office building on Hamilton Avenue, White Plains — depicts itself as a “global management company focused on acquiring iconic heritage entertainment-based intellectual property.” Its website lists 94 record labels, including Audio Fidelity, and claims it has more than 100,000 copyrights.

The firm’s managing member is Curt Frasca, according to past court records, who also goes by the names John Simon and Walter Johnson. He is not named as a defendant in the Charly complaint.

Charly says that it bought the Audio Fidelity rights in a bankruptcy auction in 1997, and that all of the recordings have been registered with the U.S. Copyright Office and several trademarks have been registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

It has been licensing and distributing digital versions of the recordings for decades, the complaint states, and intends to re-issue vinyl recordings.

43 North Broadway also reproduces digital, Audio Fidelity recordings and distributes them on public streaming services, according to the complaint, and uses counterfeit trademarks “to deceive the consuming public into believing its recordings come from the legitimate Audio Fidelity catalog.

Charly says that last year it told 43 North’s digital distributor, The Orchard, that 43 North had not been granted a license and was infringing on its rights.

Despite being presented with Charly’s bill of sale from the bankruptcy auction, 43 North allegedly claimed it held a license from Greenlawn Holdings LLC that had bought the rights from Thomas Ficara.

Ficara, according to the complaint, “has a long history of falsely claiming rights over other record catalogs.”

Charly is accusing 43 North of copyright infringement and trademark counterfeiting. It is demanding that 43 North turn over all earnings from selling Audio Fidelity recordings, or alternatively, to pay up to $150,000 for each work it infringed and $2 million for each counterfeit trademark, and to turn over all of its products, packaging and literature to be destroyed.

Charly is represented by Newport Beach, California attorneys Peter R. Afrasiabi and Leo M. Lichtman.