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Bridgeport Music

publishing company that owns the rights to some George Clinton and Funkadelic recordings

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History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 8, 2026
Entity authorityQ16985255 ↗
Source-derived summary

Bridgeport Music is a music publishing company founded in Michigan by Armen Boladian in 1969. It controls the copyrights to recordings by George Clinton and Funkadelic. Bridgeport Music has filed lawsuits for copyright infringement via sampling against hundreds of defendants under the federal copyright statute, 17 U.S.C., leading to them to being often described as a "Sample troll". Among others, Bridgeport has sued for sampling infringements in popular music produced by Public Enemy, N.W.A, Jay-Z and The Notorious B.I.G. - a case in which the jury awarded Bridgeport more than $4 million in damages.

Notable court cases

On May 4, 2001 in Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. 11C Music, 202 F.R.D. 229' (M.D. Tenn 2001), Bridgeport Music filed a lawsuit alleging infringement of its copyrights in several sound recordings and musical compositions through sampling. It was seeking declaratory judgement, injunctive relief, and damages in around 500 different claims against approximately 800 defendants. The court decided that these cases should all be tried separately, which resulted in 477 individual cases. Notable cases include:

Bridgeport Music, Inc.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Bridgeport Music” as publishing company that owns the rights to some George Clinton and Funkadelic recordings. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Bridgeport, Music and publishing.

Editorial reviewA strong contextual entry point for chronology, institutions and public events when official records are distinguished from later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1969, 2001—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1969-01-01. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Bridgeport, Music and publishing providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Bridgeport Music”, the useful work is to connect “publishing company that owns the rights to some George Clinton and Funkadelic recordings” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16985255. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1969 and 2001.

Critical limits

Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Bridgeport Music”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Bridgeport Music primary sources, Bridgeport Music archive and Bridgeport research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Bridgeport Music”?
  2. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
  3. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Bridgeport Music” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.