Don't Mess With Yoko!

As we mentioned last month, Yoko Ono was going to court to prevent the release of a tape featuring footage of John Lennon smoking weed, writing songs, and even discussing putting LSD in President Richard Nixon’s tea, from going public.

The footage was taped by Ono’s ex-husband Anthony Cox in 1969 for a documentary he planned titled Portrait.

Ono wanted to prevent World Wide Video from releasing the footage it purchased from Cox back in 2000.

World Wide Video planned to release the footage as a two hour film about Lennon, titled 3 days in the life. However, that’s never likely to happen as crazed Ono seems to have won the court case.

A U.S. District Court Judge in Boston has ruled in favor of Yoko.

World Wide Video, however, says it purchased the over nine hours of footage for more than $1 million after all the legal costs and fees were covered.

Ono insists she owns the rights, since she claimed she purchased the tapes from World Wide Video through a Florida man.

The case gets a bit confusing around this point, but World Wide Video claims the tapes were stolen and then sold to Ono illegally.

They then sued Ono for copyright infringement in a bid to publicly show them.

The judge disagreed, however, and said, “What the plaintiff suggests just doesn’t fit. It seems to me the defendant’s motion is well taken because there was no infringement.”

The judge also added that WWV waited too long to look into what happened to the stolen tapes which Ono registered back in 2002. WWV claim they didn’t discover Ono even had them until they received a letter from her attorneys last year.

The judge added that “The statute of limitations bars the claim as well. The circumstances here really favor the defendant, not the claimant.”

Joseph Doyle, the attorney for WWV said the case is still pending as the judge has yet to rule on several other aspects of the case. Doyle insists that the question of who owned the videotapes has not been resolved.

We deserve to see the footage, especially if WWV purchased it legally from the original owner of the videos.

What’s so wrong with a little pot smoking???

[Image via WENN.]