PNM threatened with legal action over alleged unauthorised use of song

KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

A copy­right dis­pute has emerged in the fi­nal days of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly cam­paign, with at­tor­neys for a US-based mu­sic pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny warn­ing of im­mi­nent court ac­tion against the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM).

In a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter dat­ed Jan­u­ary 9, at­tor­neys Keron Ramkhal­whan and Lloyd Robin­son, act­ing for VAS Pro­duc­tions LLC, wrote to PNM gen­er­al sec­re­tary Fos­ter Cum­mings and To­ba­go Coun­cil po­lit­i­cal leader An­cil Den­nis, al­leg­ing copy­right in­fringe­ment in­volv­ing the song ‘Liff Up’.

VAS Pro­duc­tions, which is head­quar­tered in At­lanta, Geor­gia, said it record­ed and pro­duced Liff Up, per­formed by lo­cal artiste Tyrell Swan, al­so known as Prince Swan­ny. The com­pa­ny said it owns the copy­right and neigh­bour­ing rights un­der an Au­gust 1, 2025 agree­ment cov­er­ing works pro­duced for the artiste’s al­bum Out­side.

Ac­cord­ing to the let­ter, a re­worked ver­sion of the song was used on Jan­u­ary 5 and 6 in cam­paign ad­ver­tise­ments for Den­nis, the PNM can­di­date for Buc­coo/Mt Pleas­ant. The at­tor­neys said the ma­te­r­i­al ap­peared in Face­book and In­sta­gram reels and was al­so played at po­lit­i­cal meet­ings.

The at­tor­neys al­leged that the melody used was iden­ti­cal to the orig­i­nal com­po­si­tion and said a cease-and-de­sist let­ter sent on Jan­u­ary 7 re­ceived no re­sponse.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Den­nis said he had not yet re­ceived the cor­re­spon­dence and could not com­ment on the al­le­ga­tions. He said he would look out for the let­ter. Cum­mings did not re­spond.

The at­tor­neys warned that le­gal pro­ceed­ings, in­clud­ing an ap­pli­ca­tion for in­ter­im re­lief, would fol­low if no re­sponse is re­ceived.