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The singer, songwriter and muse from Prince, Apollonia, submitted a new lawsuit on Tuesday (August 19), in which she claims that Prince’s estate, claims Paisley Park Enterprises“Try to steal their name”.
In her 14-page application, which was submitted to a Federal Supreme Court in Los Angeles and is in existence, explains Apollonia, whose bourgeois name Patricia Apollonia Kotero is that she played “The Famous Roll” of Apollonia, i.e. Prince ‘love, in the Prince classic “Purple Rain”. After that, Prince never asked that she should no longer use the name Apollonia and never “claim that the name is neither personally nor professionally or professionally.
“In fact, Prince himself approved Apollonia as a ‘Apollonia’ in her professional efforts and reinforced it,” says the lawsuit. “If the basic principles of fairness – do without, tolerance and limitation – then apply here.”
Rights to Apollonia claims
According to the lawsuit, Prince’s estate behaved illegally in June when he claimed the rights to the “Apollonia” brand and submitted a “declaration of intent” to use in connection with clothing and entertainment services. Kotero says that the estate has taken steps since then to delete its brand entries and registrations.
The 66-year-old Kotero is firmly convinced that she is the “rightful owner” of the name, so that the estate has no right to blame her “public confusion”. The singer-songwriter states that she has been using the name “Apollonia” for 40 years and deserves a judicial confirmation that she is the owner of the name and the associated brands.
“The entire goodwill, which has been associated with the name and brand ‘Apollonia’ in the past four decades, is to be attributed to the plaintiff,” says the lawsuit. “There is only one Apollonia, and Apollonia is the source of goods and services offered under this name.”
After becoming famous with “Purple Rain”, Kotero went to a worldwide tour to promote the film from 1984 and her hit from the film, “Sex Shooter”. She and Prince became “lifelong friends”, the lawsuit said, and she wrote the Bangles hit “Manic Monday” together with him.
Foregoing rights in the name?
Kotero says that she contributed the singing to Princes “Take Me With You” under her stage name and was regularly seen in the television series “Falcon Crest” in 1985, where she played the lover of Lorenzo Llama’s figure, also under the name Apollonia. Her self -titled solo album “Apollonia” appeared in 1988.
According to the lawsuit, Prince ‘estate claimed that by signing a contract for her role in “Purple Rain” in 1983, all rights to the name Apollonia had dispensed with. In the lawsuit, however, Kotero argues that even if she had concluded a valid, enforceable contract in which Prince kept all rights to the name “Apollonia”, these rights were “never enforced”, so that the “alleged rights” have long since expired.
“Our client assumes that she will prevail in the fight for her name,” said Kotero’s lawyer Daniel M. Cislo in an email to Rolling Stone.
Attempts to achieve a representative of the Prince’s estate were initially unsuccessful. Prince died of an accidental overdose fentanyl in 2016 at the age of 57. He left neither a will nor children, so that his six siblings inherited his assets in equal parts.