Judge orders record labels to turn over documents

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A federal judge has ordered major
record labels to turn over privileged documents after finding
they may have used misleading information to convince the
government to abandon a major antitrust probe.

The ruling late on Friday from U.S. District Judge Marilyn
Hall Patel in San Francisco came out of a dispute over which
documents Vivendi Universal’s Universal Music Group and EMI
Group Plc should be forced to release in a lengthy copyright
battle over Bertelsmann’s investment in music-swapping service
Napster.

Prosecutors in 2001 began investigating whether music
labels secretly worked together to use two joint ventures,
MusicNet and Pressplay, to discourage digital downloading and
protect CD sales by fixing digital music distribution terms.

During the investigation, the joint ventures and their
record label parents each submitted a “white paper” to the DOJ
summarizing their arguments. They also provided documents that
included redacted, or blacked out, sections to remove
privileged material.

The U.S. Justice Department abandoned the probe in December
2003, citing no evidence of wrongdoing.

Napster investor Hummer Winblad Venture Partners,
Bertelsmann’s co-defendant in the lawsuit, charged that the
arguments offered in the white papers were known to be false or
misleading.

In the ruling, Patel said Hummer Winblad provided
reasonable cause to believe that information in the white
papers was “deliberately misleading.”

Patel ordered UMG and EMI to turn over all previously held
communications related to the antitrust investigation within 30
days of the order.

The parties could not immediately be reached for contact.