SAN JOSE, Calif.--(ENTERTAINMENT WIRE)--March 3, 1999--A virtual Who's Who of entertainment and recording firms have been named as additional defendants in a lawsuit filed by two elderly Taiwanese aborigines who claim that their original work was stolen. Kuo Ying-Nan and his wife, Kuo Hsin-Chu, are now suing a total of 20 defendants on grounds that they stole their original work, "Jubilant Drinking Song." That work wound up as part of another song, "Return to Innocence," a worldwide best seller recorded by Michael Cretu and the European pop group Enigma, the Kuos contend. Cretu and Enigma were among the seven original defendants in the Kuos' lawsuit, being handled by the San Jose office of Oppenheimer Wolff & Donnelly LLP, an international law firm. Additional defendants named in a recently filed subsequent complaint are AKA Productions, Forever Girls Productions doing business as Pals Forever, Only With You Productions doing business as "It Only Happens with You Productions," Outer Productions, Quality Music & Video, Quality Records Partnership, Radikal Records, Savoy Pictures Inc., Sony Music Entertainment Inc., Warlock Productions, Warlock Records Inc., EMI U.S.A., and Exit to Eden Productions Inc. The original and subsequent complaints were filed in federal district court in Los Angeles. According to the Kuos' complaint, a recording of them singing "Jubilant Drinking Song" a cappella was included without their permission in an album titled "Chinese Folk Music Collection" published by the Chinese Folk Art Foundation. A former president of the foundation has twice declared that the song's ownership belongs to the original performers, the Kuos. Through a chain of events, the Kuos' recording was included in an album published in France some years later. In 1994 it was incorporated in "Return to Innocence," a track on Enigma's "Cross of Changes" album, as well as numerous compilation albums and movie and TV program soundtracks. "Return to Innocence" was on Billboard Magazine's international chart for 32 consecutive weeks and was adopted by the International Olympic Committee as the theme song of the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta. In addition to Cretu and Enigma, defendants named in the original complaint were Capitol EMI Music, Charisma Records of America, Mambo Music, Virgin Schallplatten and the International Olympic Committee.
