Copyrights, Paternity Disputes, In James Brown Estate Battle

James Brown died 12 years ago but the battle over his estate rages on. Brown met his fourth wife, Tomi Rae Hynie in Las Vegas, where she had a career as a Janis Joplin imitator. They were wedded in 2001, but the honeymoon ended abruptly when she told Brown she was already married to another man, Javed Ahmed, a Pakistani who had three other wives. According to Hynie, Ahmed fessed up at the altar and fled without consummating the marriage, since his real goal, American citizenship, had already been attained. The consummation part is crucial, because the question of who fathered James Brown II is one of the issues before state and federal courts in South Carolina. Another is an assertion by nine of Brown’s heirs from his previous marriages that Hynie has “embarked on a series of duplicitous business machinations calculated to deprive Brown’s children of their rightful interests in Brown’s music under the Copyright Act.” The question of termination rights enters into that dispute, and complicates it considerably. Hynie and Brown’s estate administrators are seeking dismissal, arguing that copyright law provides no remedy to invalidate the types of agreements at issue.