Thanks Bayou. I agree.
I was browsing some older posts and found this link that Jobeterob had shared back in 2014. It is not related to this lawsuit that Mary had filed, but rather a trademark filing in the UK, for the Supremes name, which resulted in a dispute between Mary and the FLOS. It describes the nature of Mary's contract with Motown in 1974, which had stated did not have the right to the Supremes name, outside of her recording contract, which Bradsupremes had pointed out earlier. It's interesting that the document states that no evidence could be found of Lynda having signed a contract with Mary's Supremes Inc., but was under contract as a Motown artist. It says that Scherrie had indeed signed a contract, as an employee of Supremes Inc., and the contact stated she could not use the Supremes name in the future, but this contract had no effect under UK law [likely because Mary was not the trademark owner].
I also found this excerpt to also be interesting:
[Mary] was aware that the opponents [Scherrie Payne and Lynda Laurence] had commenced performing again under the name. This awareness must have existed at least from 1987 because she says in paragraph 24 of her first declaration that she ..... "performed with the opponents at The Wiltshire Ebell in 1987. I attended the show because I was aggrieved at the opponents use of the name THE SUPREMES. The opponents invited me on stage and due to the attendance of many of my fans in
the audience I did go up on stage because if I had refused in front of my fans it
would have seemed churlish, but this was not to be seen as an endorsement of
the opponents activities."
I remember seeing a clip of this on Youtube.
http://www.ipo.gov.uk/o15801.pdf
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