If a laywer or agent or anyone with a financial interest can see themselves making money (off of someone else's creativity).... they can easily encourage someone to go for it or refuse a future promise for cash in hand.
The gall of Polychron is mind boggling.
I recall the dispute between Fantasy Records and John Fogerty. After the break up of CCR and a messy ending of the contract with Fantasy, Fogerty went solo. Fantasy sued him for plagiarizing CCR. Fogerty won... with the court ruling that sounding like himself was not plagiarism.
One more story.
In 1972, Spencer Haywood was granted an exeption by the American Basketball Association, a rival to the NBA, to enter their draft under a hardship clause. Haywood's mother was a sharecropper earning $2 per day picking cotton.... while raising ten children (not including Spencer). A truer hardship case cannot be imagined. Anyway, Spencer led the ABA (including Julius Erving) in both scoring (30ppg) and rebounding (19.5rpg) as a rookie and was named league MVP. In 1975 playing for the Seattle Supersonics (now the OKC Thunder), Haywood was offered a shoe deal with Nike.
Nike was an upstart running shoe company looking to expand it's market. Two years previously, Nike began sponsoring runner Steve Prefontaine. The sponsorship was successful and Nike looked to replicate their success with other sports. They began designing a basketball shoe and looking for an athlete to wear it. Nothing like this had been done before. George Mikan, Bob Cousy, Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar did not have shoe deals. And Nike thought Haywood could become their successful marketing guy.... Abdul-Jabbar (while dominating) was not viewed as relatable to the American public.
Nike called Haywood and his agent in for a meeting. The young, but cash strapped company proposed sponsoring Haywood (to wear their shoes) in exchange for ten percent of the company. Haywood's agent knew that he could not get three to seven percent of that deal... so he asked for another option. The public value of Nike at the time was one million dollars, so Nike offered Haywood one hundred thousand dollars.... saying this could really hamper their operations, but that they were really passionate about Haywood wearing the Nike Swoosh as soon as possible. The agent told Haywood that cash is king and that Nike may not be around in ten years. Haywood took the hundred grand minus three to seven percent for the agent.
Haywood wore the leather Nike Swoosh at the All-Star game and got laughed at by all the other players (who all wore canvas Chuck Taylors as all basketball players had done for forty years). Haywood took off the Nikes at halftime and put on Chuck Taylors. Converse swooped in and became the first player in the emerging basketball market by signing both Larry Bird and Earvin Johnson in 1979. Nike did alright, until they signed Michael Jordan... and American basketball, American fashion, and world wide sports marketing changed.
Today, Nike could be sold for over eighty billion dollars. Haywood would make over eight billion dollars from the sale.
I know that greed is not limited to Americans. But as an American, I feel sickened how it oozes through my society
