His movies often featured mad doctors on tropical islands, but now he’s taking on “piracy.”
Veteran/producer Samuel M. Sherman, longtime president of Independent-International Pictures Corp., has filed copyright infringement claims against the Tubi streaming platform “for the unauthorized copying, promotion, advertising, marketing, distribution and exhibition of motion pictures” from the I-I library. Specifically, Sherman states that “Tubi has repeatedly violated IIPC’s exclusive rights and copyrights and has created confusion in the marketplace with their advertising, promotion, exhibition and distribution of four of IIPC’s copyrighted films: BEAST OF BLOOD (1970), MAD DOCTOR OF BLOOD ISLAND (1969), THE BLOOD DRINKERS (1964) and HORROR OF THE BLOOD MONSTERS (1970).”
“I am extremely disappointed that the Fox-owned service Tubi failed to do any diligence with respect to my company’s ownership of these motion pictures,” Sherman says. “At no time did an acquisitions representative from Tubi contact me or my agent, David Sehring, of Drive-In-Sanity Films, to license our movies. You would think that Fox, a company formerly associated with the major motion picture studio, 20th Century Fox, would respect the rights of other producers and distributors. Unfortunately, Tubi has been negligent with respect to my company’s rights to its motion picture copyrights and intellectual property.
“My company had no other choice but to take legal action to stop Tubi,” he continues, “and to get to the bottom of what appears to be intellectual property theft and copyright infringement on a global scale.”
I-I is further alleging that Tubi has streamed “pirated” digital copies of its films, created from disc releases of titles licensed to Image Entertainment in 2002 and 2004, and to current home-video licensee Severin Films. Sherman has launched a GoFundMe campaign to raise funds for his legal battle; you can see it here.
