Tags
Conspiracy, Contributory Copyright Infringement, Federal Copyright Infringement, Federal Trademark Infringement
The Plaintiff in this lawsuit is The Evolutionary Level Above Human, Inc., a for-profit foundation claiming to own all physical property and intellectual property of the Heaven’s Gate religious group, which committed the largest mass suicide in U.S. history in 1997. Among the claimed intellectual property are copyrights in audio cassettes, audiovisual works, fabric designs, lithographic prints, and literary works, as well as various trademark registrations for HEAVEN’S GATE.
The Defendants, three individuals, are accused of publicly sharing copies of the audio tapes and video tapes on a free online file sharing and storage site called “4Shared.com.” Per the Complaint (below), Defendant Havel anticipated being sued for sharing the works, posting the following comment on his website:
“So just weeks ago, [a third party] who I had been in contact with on and off for years sent me the digitized audios, all in .mp3 format and I quickly sent them to [Defendant Bartel] and someone else who I know I can trust to be sure to upload them to the internet in mulitple [sic] places so that even if [the Foundation] somehow sue us it will be far too late to keep them from being available to those who want to listen to them.”
The Defendants subsequently provided live streamed discussions advising others how to obtain copies of the allegedly infringed works. Numerous works were live-streamed on YouTube. T-shirts bearing the Plaintiff’s registered trademarks has been advertised by the Defendants. The Complaint alleges further actions taken by the Defendants to prevent the Plaintiff from enforcing its copyrights.
Having anticipated a lawsuit, presumably the Defendants have some type of solid defense ready to go. I expect fair use arguments (criticism, commentary, news reporting, teaching), and probably some challenges to the foundation’s ownership of the claimed intellectual property. But t-shirt sales don’t usually go hand-in-hand with valid fair uses so we’ll just wait for the Defendants’ Answer for more clarification of their goals in sharing the works.
The Evolutionary Level Above Human, Inc. d/b/a/ The Telah Foundation v. Havel et al.
Case Number: 3:22-cv-00395-JD-MGG
File Date: May 18, 2022
Plaintiff: The Evolutionary Level Above Human, Inc. d/b/a The Telah Foundation
Plaintiff Counsel: Isaac S. Crum of Messner Reeves LLP
Defendant: Steven Robert Havel, Cathy JoAnn Weaver, Jason Bartel
Cause: Federal Copyright Infringement, Contributory Copyright Infringement, Conspiracy, Federal Trademark Infringement
Court: Northern District of Indiana
Judge: Jon E. DeGuilio
Referred To: Michael G. Gotsch, Sr.
Complaint:
Indiana Intellectual Property Blog 
Here are the facts of this case:
The Heaven’s Gate group held no copyrights other than a Common Law Copyright on their book.
https://heavensgate.com/book/02.htm
The TELAH Foundation was incorporated after the Heaven’s Gate group was gone. All of the Foundation’s copyrights were filed after the group was gone.
Nowhere in any of the letters that were sent to the Plaintiffs by HG did the HG group mention the word “copyright”, much less that they asked Mark and Sarah King to file any copyrights.
The masters for the Beyond Human series were given to a former member of the HG group in Venezuela. The Plaintiffs copyrighted these videos without telling this individual.
The masters for the “Exit videos” were given to yet another former member of the group, Chuck Humphrey. Mr. Humphrey was also given the disks with the group’s last statements and asked to upload them to heavensgate.com and to “assist” with the website. I have the letters that the HG group sent to Mr. Humphrey as well as to the Plaintiffs and the ISP that was hosting the website. The individual in Venezuela has allowed the letter sent to him by the group to be submitted as evidence. I also have the letter that the group sent to their landlord.
Nearly all of the Plaintiff’s copyrighted material was donated to multiple libraries in 1997 by Mr. Humphrey. These items are listed as having a “Publisher. Right To Know Enterprises”
https://www.worldcat.org/search?q=au=%22Heaven%27s%20Gate%20(Organization)%22
The only copyrighted items not donated to libraries by Right To Know Enterprises are the audio tapes numbered 219-486 as Mr. Humphrey did not have access to those tapes after he gave them to the Plaintiffs. Mr Humphrey and Wayne Parker ( another former member ) retrieved the 486 ( later copyrighted ) tapes from a storage locker in San Diego County in late March of 1997. Mark King later obtained the tapes from Mr. Humphrey and promised that they would be made available.
I was involved in helping Mr. Humphrey donate the materials to libraries. We made copies of the audio tapes and digitized them and put them on CD-ROMs. I still give away these CDs to this day.
Yet another former member of the group ( Wayne Parker ) was asked to “register” the group’s book with the Library of Congress. This was never done. Instead, the TELAH Foundation copyrighted the book in their name even though it already had the aforementioned Common Law Copyright on it which allows anyone to reproduce it. The Right To Know edition of the HG book is in the Library of Congress.
@crlody lemme get some CDs yo
As per two rulings by Judge Lisa Guy-Schall in 1999 the Telah Foundation never had any intellectual property rights to the audio tape collection that they are suing the Defendants for in the above suit.
From Judge Guy-Schall”s February of 1999 ruling:
There Is no evidence, written or otherwise, transferring ownership of Intellectual
property rights in the “The Audiootape Library of Heaven’S Gate by TI and Do.”
From Judge Guy-Schall’s August of 1999 settlement decision with Mark and Sarah King of Telah:
This agreement affects only the Parties’ rights and
interests in the intellectual and tangible property held by the
Public Administrator
The property held by the San Diego County Public Administrator was seized by San Diego authorities in late March of 1997. The 486 tapes in the ‘Audiotape Library of Heaven’s Gate” were never held by the Public Administrator and are not listed on the items that Mark and Sarah King purchased from the County for $2,000. The audio tapes were copyrighted on 10-27-97 when the property that the Kings later received from the County was still being held by the Public Administrator. Therefore, the copyrights that the Telah Foundation filed on 10-27-97 is invalid and Mark and Sarah of the Telah Foundation filed a lawsuit based on a fraudulently obtained copyright claiming that it was done as a ‘work for hire’ ‘. No written documentation demonstrating an employer/employee or employer/independent contractor relationship has been produced by Mark and Sarah King to prove that any of the works copyrighted by the Foundation were done as a ‘work for hire’. No creator for these ‘works for hire’ has ever been proven to exist. The Kings are trying to claim that the Heaven’s Gate group hired someone outside of the group to write the group’s book, produce all of their videos and 486 audio tapes.