July 24, 2021 | The Biz

Flava Works takes hit in lawsuit against Adam4Adam

A long running legal battle between Flava Works and dating site Adam4Adam (A4A) took a dramatic turn last week. A Miami federal judge has ordered that a large amount of the intellectual property associated with Flava Works be seized and auctioned off.

The judge sided with defendant A4A’s motion asking for the seizure; it made the request a year ago. Flava Works was also ordered to pay A4A's attorney fees from the proceeds of the sale.

The legal battle started years ago. In 2014, Flava Works and its owner Phillip Bleicher accused A4A of using its copyrighted and trademarked images to promote third-party products.

“Flava Works did not license Adam4Adam to use its copyrighted works to promote these products and services that have no affiliation with our company," Flava Works CEO and founder Phillip Bleicher said at the time. The civil suit demanded that the Adam4Adam.com domain be transferred to Flava Works, access to the dating site's profits and a restraining order. 

The civil action did not go according to plan. In 2019, A4A's attorneys requested a summary judgement in a counter suit, and asked the plaintiff be forced to sell parts of its IP and pay A4A's attorney fees. That request was granted but FlavaWorks  dragged its feet for two years. 

Judge Jonathan Goodman accused Bleicher of showing an "extreme disregard for the court’s orders,” and that although “the order initially awarding fees was entered more than two years ago,” Bleicher had “spent the past two years claiming to be in search of counsel, attempting to re-litigate previously-decided issues and ignoring court orders and deadlines.”

“Even when Plaintiff has had counsel,” Goodman declared, “he has requested numerous extensions, missed multiple deadlines, and continued to re-litigate — in this Court — previously resolved issues.”

"We unfortunately hired some attorneys who turned out to be of the same caliber as Rudy Giuliani — and two of them are currently under investigation by the bar disciplinary commission and one was recently disbarred," Bleicher countered. "We are cleaning up this mess, not going out of business and have filed Chapter 11 to reorganize these debts." 

We just hope FlavaWorks keeps making porn.