Sony Music must pay Steve Popovich, founder of Cleveland International Records, $5 million for failing to put his company’s logo on reissues of Meat Loaf‘s iconic “Bat Out of Hell” album, a federal appeals court ruled.
Popovich started his label in 1977 and soon afterwards signed Meat Loaf and persuaded Epic Records to release the wildly successful album. Epic was owned at the time by CBS Records.
Sony, who bought out CBS, paid $6.7 million to Popovich and his former partners in 1998 to settle a lawsuit over royalties from the album. The settlement required Sony to place the Cleveland International logo on future Meat Loaf albums, but Sony did not add the logo to “Bat Out of Hell” for more than a year. That’s why they were ordered to pay Popovich an extra $5 million in damages.