questions to its co-author, the late singer’s 80-year-old mother.
The gauzily shot moment of marketing gold last month was not the work of the official Jackson estate but of a little-known
a brash, goateed 38-year-old who cut his teeth in the titillation trade
— nude online gambling, a naked women’s wrestling league — and is now
pursuing an unorthodox plan to profit from what he calls “the most
valuable name in history.”
That plan is a direct challenge to the Jackson
estate, the behemoth quasi-corporation whose carefully strategized
promotion of the pop star’s legacy and ironhanded crackdown on
unlicensed merchandise have translated into hundreds of millions in
posthumous earnings. The brewing fight between the estate and Mann is
the latest wrinkle in the settling of his affairs and another reminder
that even in death, nothing involving the King of Pop is ever simple.
Mann is taking on the estate armed with two weapons
— a legal loophole that he says gives him carte blanche to flout
intellectual property laws, and an unlikely alliance with Jackson’s
mother, Katherine. Frustrated with the size of her allowance from the
estate, the family matriarch has entered into a business partnership
with Mann in which she has given her blessing to the book and other
projects and he has paid her what he said was “hundreds of thousands of
dollars.”
“I’m very pleased working with Howard. He’s been very good to me,” she said recently.
These joint endeavors are becoming a headache for estate administrators, who seem reticent to offend
the guardian of the singer’s three children and a much admired figure
to fans. A lawyer for the estate dismissed Mann’s novel legal theory as
flawed, but the administrators have not moved to stop sales of his
unauthorized Jackson products as they have others who tried to cash in
on Jackson’s name or likeness. For the past five months, the estate has
sat silent as Mann’s company, Vintage Pop Media, has touted its
ownership of a trove of Jackson memorabilia — photos, personal papers,
costumes and music — and hawked the book, calendars and other items on
its website.
Asked to explain, the estate’s lawyer,
In the scope of the Jackson empire, with its
calendar — are small-time. However, his projects have hit a nerve in
the delicate relationship between Jackson’s beloved mother and the two
music veterans he tapped in his will to control his business affairs.
Under the terms of a private trust set up by the
will, the singer’s children and his mother each get a 40 percent share
of the trust with the remainder going to charity. Upon
half a billion dollars at the time of his death. The estate remains in
the red although massive music and merchandise deals as well as
financial restructuring have significantly reduced the debt.
In a telephone interview,
“I wish they would leave Howard alone and I wish
they would leave me alone for working with Howard. I’m not greedy like
people say. It’s need, not greed,” she said.
The estate disputes the suggestion that
administrators are not meeting her living expenses. Weitzman, the
lawyer, noted that the allowance was approved by a probate judge and
said the cash payments were only one aspect of the financial support
that administrators provided. The estate also paid off the mortgage on
the family home in
“The estate has spent millions of dollars for Mrs.
Jackson’s benefit and on the direct living expenses of both Mrs.
Jackson and the children,” Weitzman said.
But for
not enough. “I think I should be getting more,” she said. She declined
to specify why she needed the money. Her husband, Joe, sought an
allowance from the court but was denied. Several other grandchildren
also reside at the family home.
Finances were on her mind a few months after her son’s death when she was approached by Mann.
The business partners seem an odd pair:
Mann was the former chief executive of an online gambling site that
featured topless porn stars as dealers and also headed up the
But when Mann introduced himself to
death, he offered her two things she wanted: money and the opportunity
to protect her son’s reputation from yet another damaging press report.
Both stemmed from his purchase of an enormous
memorabilia collection that Jackson’s parents had originally assembled
for a planned family museum.
at a 2001 bankruptcy auction. Eventually, the memorabilia came into the
possession of a
Pop, for copyright infringement, cybersquatting, violation of his
privacy rights and other claims in 2004, but the next year after his
acquittal on child molestation charges, he decamped to Bahrain, refused
to submit to a deposition and stopped paying his lawyers.
A federal judge dismissed the case in 2006 “with prejudice” — meaning the singer was barred from refiling the same claims.
After Jackson’s death, word that Vaccaro was trying
to sell the collection reached Mann. He wasn’t a fan of Jackson’s
music, but he had previously considered purchasing a music catalog of
early Jackson 5 recordings and he saw investment potential in the
warehouse of old costumes, yellowing papers, artwork, pictures and
recordings. When he looked closer, however, he concluded that the most
valuable thing Vintage Pop had was not a particular piece of
memorabilia but the court decision.
As Mann saw it, whoever owned the company Jackson
had sued, Vintage Pop, was forever immunized against intellectual
property suits from Jackson or his heirs and had free rein to make
money from Jackson’s name.
“This is effectively a satellite estate. Its value is unfathomable,” Mann said.
Vaccaro and his family were stunned by his assessment of the judge’s declaration.
“We were thinking all this stuff, that’s the golden
goose, the last thing we were thinking was this piece of paper,”
recalled Vaccaro’s son-in-law,
Mann’s theory hasn’t been tested in court, but
“It’s kind of like the civil equivalent of double
jeopardy. You get one bite at the apple and that is it,” said Vairo, a
civil procedure expert. She said that by abandoning the case, Jackson
“essentially forfeited his intellectual property.”
“The law is rather unforgiving. (Estate lawyers) can
argue that there is some reason why there should be a departure from
the normal rule we’d apply, but they are going to have a tough row to
hoe,” she said.
Weitzman, the lawyer for the estate, said he disagreed with Mann’s analysis but declined to elaborate.
After buying Vintage Pop, Mann approached
He said he told her that he could provide regular
cash payments with more ease than the estate, which was encumbered by
her son’s debt.
He also told her that a British tabloid was offering
him “seven figures” for a “particular item” from the memorabilia
locker. Mann declined to identify the item or the publication but said
it was clear the paper’s goal was to smear Jackson’s memory.
At the family’s request, he destroyed the item and returned a box of other personal items to the family.
“He was nice enough to come to me with those things and I really appreciated what he did,”
The relationship has not been without missteps. This
fall, Vintage Pop gave the gossip site TMZ a track from the memorabilia
locker that the site advertised as never before released. It turned out
to be a remix of an old Jacksons track, “Destiny.” The fan backlash was
swift and brutal, and Mann had to issue an apology.
In addition to the book and other merchandise, Mann
is working on a documentary based on 26 hours of Jackson family
videotapes from the memorabilia locker. He is also planning a
music-sharing site where users can remix some of the 273 Jackson music
tracks from the memorabilia he bought.
“Long term, we believe the fan is going to want to
buy the product that his mother feels is worthy to have his name
attached,” Mann said.
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