Messy Golden Globes Legal Battle Heats Up With New Salvo

Penske Media’s Golden Globes has sued the Golden Globe Foundation, the latest escalation in a legal battle over ownership of the awards show.

The lawsuit marks another front in a fight stemming from the Golden Globes’ messy divorce from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the group of non-American journalists that founded the awards show in 1943. Dick Clark Productions — a large producer of televised live event entertainment programming, which shares the same ownership as The Hollywood Reporter — and Eldridge bought the Golden Globes from the embattled association. That purchase is in court, with the HFPA alleging Penske Media and Eldridge fraudulently acquired the show as part of a larger plan to monopolize the awards market.

Now, the Golden Globe Foundation is facing a lawsuit for continuing to use the name of the show. It seeks a court order that, if granted, would bar the nonprofit from continuing to do so, plus unspecified damages.

Under a 2022 deal, the Golden Globe Foundation was created to allow the HFPA to continue charitable activities. The lawsuit claims the group’s use of the name has expanded beyond nonprofit work to include selling merchandise, hosting events featuring the brand and engaging in other commercial work.

Last year, Golden Globes LLC and Eldridge sent a cease and desist to the foundation demanding it to stop continuing to identify itself with the brand, the lawsuit says. Negotiations for a license broke down after the nonprofit elected Raffi Boghosian as the president of its board of directors earlier this year, according to the complaint. Eldridge says Boghosian directed the termination of former CEO Gregory Goeckner and the lawyer handling the deal talks, “signaling GGF’s intent to continue using the Golden Globe mark without authorization.”

The lawsuit adds that the nonprofit’s expanding use of the Golden Globe name is part of a “broader pattern of coordination between GGF and the HFPA directed against Plaintiff and its affiliates.” It points to the HFPA’s settlement talks with the Golden Globe Foundation, which was named in as a defendant in the lawsuit filed against PMC earlier this year. Under the proposed deal, the nonprofit will transfer charitable funds to the HFPA.

“The HFPA’s inclusion of GGF as a defendant was a pretext designed to facilitate this transfer, and the settlement is intended to redirect charitable funds to finance the HFPA’s lawsuit and other private disputes against Plaintiff,” states the complaint filed on Sept. 30 in California federal court. “This coordination between GGF and the HFPA further demonstrates that GGF’s continued use of the GOLDEN GLOBE Mark is not undertaken in good faith, but rather as part of a concerted effort to trade on the goodwill of Plaintiff’s mark while acting in alignment with the HFPA against Plaintiff’s interests.”

The HFPA, Eldrige and PMC didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

The HFPA has accused Penske Media of leveraging its control over the Hollywood trades to instigate a boycott of the group with the goal of rendering it vulnerable to an acquisition. The awards show was sold after an industry-wide boycott that resulted in major players across Hollywood refusing to broadcast or participate in the Golden Globes ceremony in 2022.