{"id":240459,"date":"2026-03-10T12:21:51","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T16:21:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/2026\/03\/10\/dionne-warwick-sues-rights-firm-for-allegedly-stealing-millions-in-her-royalties-2\/"},"modified":"2026-03-10T12:21:51","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T16:21:51","slug":"dionne-warwick-sues-rights-firm-for-allegedly-stealing-millions-in-her-royalties-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/2026\/03\/10\/dionne-warwick-sues-rights-firm-for-allegedly-stealing-millions-in-her-royalties-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Dionne Warwick Sues Rights Firm For Allegedly Stealing Millions In Her\u00a0Royalties"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\tDionne Warwick<\/a> has filed a lawsuit accusing a rights management company of stealing \u201cmillions of dollars in royalty income\u201d from her \u201cWalk On By\u201d and other iconic hits.<\/p>\n

\n\tArtists Rights Enforcement Corp. first sued Warwick<\/a> last year, claiming she\u2019d unfairly reneged on a longtime partnership. The group said it had lucratively represented her for years, including negotiating the Warwick sample in Doja Cat\u2019s recent chart-topping \u201cPaint the Town Red.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut in a scathing countersuit on Monday, Warwick\u2019s lawyers are telling her side of the story: That AREC exploited a one-page agreement hastily signed in 2001 to quietly skim millions of dollars from the 85-year-old singer for more than two decades until she recently caught on.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\u201cMs. Warwick seeks to expose AREC\u2019s performative ethics and vindicate her rights and obtain restitution for the damages caused by AREC\u2019s decades-long pilfering of millions of dollars in royalty income she earned as a result her legendary recordings,\u201d her lawyer Robert S. Meloni writes in the court filing, obtained and first reported by Billboard<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n\tCalling AREC a \u201cwolf in sheep\u2019s clothing,\u201d Warwick says the group has wrongfully taken royalties from songs including \u201cWalk On By,\u201d \u201cI Say a Little Prayer,\u201d \u201cI\u2019ll Never Fall in Love Again,\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s What Friends Are For,\u201d \u201cDo You Know the Way to San Jose,\u201d \u201cAlfie,\u201d and many others recorded over her long career.<\/p>\n

\n\tWarwick\u2019s lawsuit also claims that AREC improperly scuttled a potential deal Warwick was negotiating with Primary Wave to sell the company revenue streams from her sound recordings. The group allegedly reached out to Primary Wave to say that Warwick could not do so \u2014 a move her lawyers say was an illegal effort to \u201cdestroy or damage Ms. Warwick prospective business opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAREC was founded in 1977 by Chuck Rubin, a music industry figure who the New York Times<\/em> once described a \u201cwhite knight of rock\u201d<\/a> who had made a career out of \u201chelping the performers who shaped rock-and-roll to receive what their songs have earned.\u201d Gabin Rubin, Chuck\u2019s daughter, has served in top roles at the company since the late 1990s.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tSalt-N-Pepa Tap \u2018Blurred Lines\u2019 Copyright Lawyer for UMG Music Ownership\u00a0Appeal\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3><\/div>\n

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\n\tIn its December lawsuit, AREC claimed that one of those artists had been Warwick. The company said it had worked \u201cat great effort and expense\u201d to boost her royalties for decades \u201cat no cost to her,\u201d in return a 50 percent cut of any money recovered through the enforcement efforts. It specifically called out the sample in Doja\u2019s \u201cPaint,\u201d which spent three weeks atop the Hot 100 and 37 overall weeks on the chart.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut in Monday\u2019s countersuit, Warwick\u2019s attorneys say that complaint \u201cgrossly exaggerates\u201d the services AREC actually provided to the star over the years, and certainly doesn\u2019t account for the \u201cstaggering\u201d and \u201cdisproportionate\u201d cut it took from her royalties.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt is full of self-aggrandizing statements designed to inflate its purported contributions and justify the unmerited windfall of millions of dollars to which it was not entitled,\u201d her lawyers write. \u201cWhen you strip away the illusion manufactured by AREC and expose the lie, AREC\u2019s efforts were at best nothing more than administrative in nature, or activities that music lawyers routinely perform for an hourly fee.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a response statement to Billboard<\/em> on Tuesday, AREC defended its work for Warwick, saying she had been receiving only \u201ca small fraction\u201d of her rightful compensation before hiring the company.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cArtists Rights\u2019 work has multiplied the amount of royalties that Ms. Warwick receives, both from her classic masters and the expanded use of her work, such as Doja Cat\u2019s hit \u201cPaint the Town Red,\u201d the group said in the statement.\u00a0\u201cWe look forward to proving that Artists Rights is entitled to its fee for the extensive work it has done for Ms. Warwick.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tThe dispute between Warwick and AREC centers on a 2001 agreement inked by both sides after the singer retained the group to chase down unpaid royalties allegedly owed to her by then-called Warner Bros. Records. AREC claims that deal gives it the right to enforce her rights \u201cin perpetuity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut in Monday\u2019s countersuit, Warwick\u2019s attorneys say she believed that deal, signed without a lawyer, applied only to the specific dispute with Warner Bros: \u201cInstead, for 23 years AREC took a 50% share of anything<\/em> and everything<\/em> that flowed as a result of her creative output from 1962 to 2001.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOver that period, AREC has \u201ccollected and deposited into its own bank account all of Ms. Warwick\u2019s royalty income,\u201d Warwick\u2019s lawyers say. And in a \u201cprofound failure of the transparency required\u201d the group \u201cnever prepared or rendered any accounting statements\u201d for such payments.<\/p>\n

\n\tWarwick says she didn\u2019t discover the problem until September, when she retained Douglas J. Davis, a well-known music attorney. Davis immediately demanded more detailed records from the group, and later terminated the deal when such files were not provided, sparking the December lawsuit.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cRather than addressing the reasonable demands made by Ms. Warwick\u2019s counsel or offering any justification for its numerous defalcations, AREC instead chose to initiate this litigation against Ms. Warwick.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn technical terms, the lawsuit accuses AREC of breaching its fiduciary duty to Warwick, defrauding her, and breaching its contract with her. It also claims that it committed \u201ctortious interference with prospective business relations\u201d by intervening in the Primary Wave negotiations.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Aller \u00e0 la source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dionne Warwick has filed a lawsuit accusing a rights management company of stealing \u201cmillions of dollars in royalty income\u201d from her \u201cWalk On By\u201d and other iconic hits. Artists Rights Enforcement Corp. first sued Warwick last year, claiming she\u2019d unfairly reneged on a longtime partnership. The group said it had lucratively represented her for years, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-240459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musique","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240459\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}