Kylie Minogue has launched legal action in Melbourne seeking hundreds of thousands of dollars from the millionaire British record producer who helped launch her international career.

Minogue, above, says PAL Productions has massively underpaid royalties due on her Greatest Hits album. She is seeking a trial by judge alone in the Victorian Supreme Court.

Famed pop producer Pete Waterman, awarded an OBE this month by the Queen, runs PAL Productions. He was originally a partner in Stock Aitken Waterman, the giant songwriting and producing firm founded in 1984 that has made some of the world's biggest hit singles.

Stock Aitken Waterman launched Minogue's pop career outside Australia in 1988 after she visited their London office wanting to record a song.

Waterman later admitted the song they wrote for her, I Should Be So Lucky, was poached from classical composer Pachelbel's Canon. It was recorded the same day and topped the British charts for five weeks.

Minogue and her family, trading as KDB Pty Ltd, hired De La Haye Royalty Service two years ago to examine the PAL books. De La Haye reported that

Minogue was underpaid by more than 10 per cent, or more than $1.08 million.

PAL has since paid the Minogue company a further $645,000 but KDB has now lodged papers at the Supreme Court seeking hundreds of thousands of dollars more.

The principal claim is over Minogue's huge-selling Greatest Hits album, released in 1992 and re-released in 2002. The action also mentions the Let's Get to It album, her fourth.

The relationship between Minogue and Waterman has not always been smooth. In 1996 he accused her of "selling out" by abandoning her girl-next-door image for a raunchier one.

In 2002 Waterman told a magazine that Minogue's first hit in 1988 almost sent Stock Aitken Waterman bankrupt because it had to pay her so much.

Waterman split with his partners in the early 1990s. Stock and Aitken sued him in 1997 in a major row over rights to royalties. Waterman is reported to have made $132 million selling records.

Company records show the Minogue company KDB is based at 2 Jackson Street, Toorak, and its directors include Carol and Ron Minogue (Kylie's parents) and Kylie. Shareholders are Ron and Carol, Kylie and sister Dannii (Danielle Jane Minogue) and brother Brendan.

The court documents reveal the extraordinary pulling power of Minogue whose record and CD sales extend as far as Brazil, Israel, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Spain and Thailand.

KDB has launched its action through Riordans Lawyers in La Trobe Street. Melbourne show business lawyer Stuart Gibson is representing PAL.

He told The Sunday Age yesterday PAL would defend the action but had no comment now.

WHAT KYLIE WANTS

· $153,071 from "incorrect deduction" of discounts on Greatest Hits.
· $49,711 for incorrect charges for packaging the Greatest Hits CDs.
· $125,624 from royalties due but not paid under an agreement renegotiated in 1992.
· $9318 unpaid because of faulty calculation of royalties on CDs.
· $10,000 for unpaid "overseas royalties" (outside US, UK and Australia-NZ).
· Unquantified "third-party" royalties.
· Unspecified damages.
· Interest and costs
from KYLIE.com

Isn't it PWL?

VoicesCarry said:

Just read the damn article. It referrences PAL.

Chico1 said:

I know, but all I've read about is PWL records.

VoicesCarry said:

Some people are so difficult!



VoicesCarry > < chico

Chico1 said:

It's Kylie you should be spanking.


[Edited 1/22/05 14:54pm]

VoicesCarry said:

ok!