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Popular adult Superstar Sara Jay (www.sarajay.com & www.twitter.com/sarajayxxx) is happy to announce that she & Brazzers have mutually agreed to resolve a hard fought lawsuit filed by Jay over a website called “SaraJayBlog.com”.
The popular star sued Brazzers claiming it had set up the Blog through an Affiliate with the express purpose of impersonating her and stealing traffic. Brazzers disputed Sara Jay’s claims, asserting, among other things that it was not responsible for the actions of an affiliate that was sending it traffic.
Jay asserted that Brazzers was engaging in an industry wide practice of setting up similar blogs to ‘impersonate’ girls in the business to get traffic & sales.
After the case was filed, the Blog was taken down. Brazzers tried to have the entire case thrown out by the trial court claiming Jay’s claims were barred by an arbitration agreement in a modeling release Jay had signed which Brazzers said also gave it the right to ‘promote’ images it owned in whatever manner it saw fit.
After losing those arguments at the trial court level, Brazzers took an appeal up to the Court of Appeal which it lost resulting in an award of costs in Jay’s favor.
The case was ordered into mediation where the parties agreed to resolve the case with Brazzers agreeing Jay had the right to try and get the domain back for herself.
Sara Jay says: “I sued because there was a Blog out there purporting to be my ‘official’ blog which sent all the traffic – and sales – to Brazzers.
Needless to say, I take any attempt to use my name to make money of my name very seriously. We won at the Trial Court & Court of Appeal levels. However, with the blog now gone & Brazzers agreeing it would not stand in the way me getting back the url, settling made sense.
“We were both incurring massive amounts of time, legal expenses & costs – time I could be spending shooting or on my career. I’d rather be on set having sex for my fans than in a court room. It was a bitter battle with Brazzers & but it was better for both sides to resolve it.”
Of legal interest in the case was Brazzers’ claim that it had given an oral agreement for one Brazzers entity to use the model release rights to all other Brazzers entities.
The Court of Appeal found that an oral agreement pertaining to matters that are the subject of copyright (such as photographs) is invalid unless in writing. The court found that taking out the domain name “SaraJayBlog.Com” was not permitted by the Brazzers contract that Ms. Jay had signed.
It held that Ms. Jay’s “suit does not involve the subject matter of the [Brazzers’ entity] contract”. Whether this judicial ruling will cause Brazzers to change its policy of promoting its websites using domain names of the actresses with whom it has signed releases remains to be seen.
Sara Jay notes: “It’s amazing what companies are trying to do based on purported ‘modeling releases’. All I can say is… be careful what you sign.”
Sara Jay can be reached for comment at:
[email protected]
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