Steve Perry v. Journey: The Latest on Their Legal Drama
The Steve Perry/Journey legal drama continues with Neal Schon taking to an Instagram comment section to go off about it all.
As previously reported, Perry filed a petition against his former bandmates Schon and Jonathan Cain over trademark registrations of 20 popular Journey songs. Perry alleges in his petition Schon and Cain didn’t have the legal grounds to file for trademarks. He also claims he should have been notified of the registrations per a previous legal agreement relating to various Journey compositions that were created when Perry was still in the band.”
Following the news of Perry’s petition, Schon took to Facebook and alleged Perry was involved in an attempted takeover of Nightmare Productions, Inc., one of Journey's corporate entities along with bassist Ross Valory, drummer Steve Smith, and former Journey manager Herbie Herbert
In his latest social media rant, Schon wrote, “31 years later when he left for the ‘Last Time’ as there were many before that. He (was present) at the board of directors meeting as no one thought I was there but while being represented by my Attorney ….I was there listening on the line. So, it’s not true that he was only there through proxy. His voice was heard by myself and all that attended voting me off the Board and voting Ross whom he fired and Smith who he fired as well as Herbie. Smith voted himself in as president- Ross voted himself in as Secretary and they all through myself under the bus as well as [Jonathan Cain], but Jon had initially called the board meeting.”
Schon continued, “Also the Elmo Perry was forced upon us all to sign that he and his attorney had drawn up 10min before we were to go on in Hawaii at a string of five sold out shows Neal Blaisdell Center. We had played the first two then our Manager Herbie came to us stating Steve Perry was not going to go on without us signing. Herbie claimed he didn’t know what else to do… so he suggested we sign. We did sign but I will say under duress and not having any time for any other legal to look at it. Bottom line all these years have gone by then I found out our music wasn’t even trademarked nor the name until 2005 and I trademarked the rest of everything in 2020.”
He added, “So out of all the attorneys/ accountants manager we’ve had do you think just one of them could have taken care of business and protected the band out of the hundreds of thousands of dollars we spent throughout the years? I’m going to take a ‘wild guess’ and say that they all knew the differences between song writing / copyright and ultimately the ‘Trade Marks’ to everything. Just a little something to think about friends.”