There’s more headaches for Future Music today, with former head honcho Jason Ayoubi having his demands for Cold Rock Ice Creamery to give him a million tubs of ice-cream chucked out of court, after he failed to turn up for the hearing on three separate occasions.
Ayoubi sued Franchised Food Company, owner of ice-cream brands Cold Rock and Mr Whippy, after the former ran a promotion offering winners two tickets to Future Music Festival. Ayoubi told Franchised Food’s CEO Stan Gordon to drop any reference to his event in Cold Rock’s advertising, with Fairfax Media reporting he emailed him demands of ice-cream:
“Stan this is beyond a joke buddy. I will now be taking care of this issue from our side no lawyers required… If you don’t pay us for the use of our IP then I will advertise that you [sic] winners will be refused entry. So we want 1 million tubs of cold rock for free.”
Gordon says he ceased to use Future’s branding in his promotion immediately, but Future Entertainment launched legal proceedings in May anyway. However, Ayoubi failed to show in court on 5th July, 7th August and 30th August, leading to Justice Murphy throwing out the case, awarding Cold Rock $30,000 in expenses and saying Future “has treated the respondents shabbily and the court with contempt”.
But here’s where things start to melt – Future most likely no longer owned the trademarks they were suing over at the time legal proceedings were launched. In June, Future Events, Future Tours and Future Entertainment changed their name to Music Events and, according to Fairfax, not only had no assets to their name but also had debts of over $500,000.
The team now behind Future Music Festival is a newly registered entity called Future Music Holdings, which Ayoubi also works for, headed up by a mystery woman called Maria Papadimitriou.
Gordon told The Age he believes it’s an obvious bid to evade creditors:
“We think it’s a phoenix transaction. We intend to actively pursue the directors of the company for costs. The proceedings should never have been commenced because they didn’t even own the trademarks when they issued the writ.”
Asked what he would do if the companies had no assets, Gordon replied, “I will liquidate the directors and their personal assets.”
(via The Age)
