Singer Jin Min-ho lost the lawsuit he filed against his former agency seeking contractually agreed payments.
On the 30th, OSEN reported that the Seoul Central District Court (Civil Division 33, single judge) recently dismissed all of the plaintiff (Jin Min-ho)'s claims in the lawsuit filed by singer Jin Min-ho against his former agency, Banman Entertainment Co. Ltd., seeking contractually agreed payments. The court also ruled that the losing party, Jin Min-ho, must bear the litigation expenses in full.
In November 2022, after agreeing to terminate his exclusive contract with Banman Entertainment, Jin Min-ho filed a lawsuit five months later seeking payment of some 370 million won in unpaid settlements. Jin Min-ho based his claim on the reason that "if neighboring rights to albums released on Musicow during the exclusive contract period were transferred, the proceeds from that transfer are subject to settlement distribution."
The court said it recognized that albums subject to transfer under the exclusive contract belonged to the agency, and that, even under the Copyright Act, neighboring rights to transferred albums are recognized as the property of the agency. The court also said that income related to the sale of records and content that the parties agreed to distribute to each other merely means selling to consumers and does not appear to mean the transfer of the records and content themselves.
The court specified that there are no unpaid settlements to date, that the company's total expenditures are insufficient to support the claim that there are settlements to be paid, and that there is no admissible evidence to prove such a claim.
Separately, regarding Jin Min-ho's criminal complaint accusing the agency of embezzlement, fraud and other charges, the prosecution in October ruled the case "no charges."
Meanwhile, Jin Min-ho drew attention in 2011 as the vocalist of the band Plainnote when he won the grand prize at MBC's "College Song Festival" with "The Swan's Song." Beginning with the 2016 solo single "Mind," he released "Banman," "How is it," "I grew to hate ballads," "An ordinary day" and others, and he is active in various fields, including composing and contributing to OSTs.
[OSEN]