Martin Shkreli Reignites Wu-Tang Clan Album Battle with Lawsuit

Martin Shkreli is back in the news.

As per Rolling Stone, the controversial pharmaceutical executive  has filed a counter lawsuit against RZA, after being involved in a struggle over Wu-Tang Clan's single-copy Once Upon a Time in Shaolin album for several years.

In a new federal court filing obtained by the publication, Shkreli claims he remains the rightful owner of half of the album's current copyrights, with the other half purportedly due to him 88 years after he purchased the LP in 2015.

He claims this despite federal officials seizing the album and selling it in 2021 in order to pay victims linked to Shkreli’s 2017 securities fraud conviction.

Shkreli wants the court to issue a declaratory judgement confirming his asserted copyright ownership.

With his new counterclaims, Shkreli is asking the court to issue a declaratory judgment confirming his asserted copyright ownership. He contends that RZA and Wu-Tang Clan producer Cilvaringz wrongly reclaimed and resold the copyrights without his knowledge amid his criminal case battles, and he further says the alleged double-dipping ended with PleasrDAO acquiring the exclusive rights to exploit the album under a purportedly improper “duplicate sale.”

Shkreli says he paid $1.5 million for the only existing hard copy of the album in 2015 through a byzantine deal with RZA, born Robert Diggs, and Cilvaringz, legal name Tarik Azzougarh, that was “bifurcated” into tangible and intangible deliverables.

He alleges the tangible portion included the two-disc set tucked into an engraved nickel-silver box, a gold-leafed certificate of authenticity, and a leather-bound manuscript containing information about the musical work.

The intangible side, meanwhile, included his purported immediate grant of 50 percent ownership of the album’s copyrights and the promised transfer of the remaining half in 2103, he claims.

Shkreli invoked the alleged 2015 agreement after PleasrDAO sued him first. In a complaint filed in June 2024, the group accused him of improperly retaining copies of the album after the criminal court ordered its full forfeiture. The group said it was concerned he had already released, or intended to release, some or all of the closely guarded music to the public.

Last month, a federal judge allowed PleasrDAO’s civil case to move toward trial, finding that the album could qualify as a trade secret unlawfully retained by Shkreli. In his Monday filing, Shkreli demanded a formal ruling that the album “is not a protected trade secret.”

Steven Cooper, the lead lawyer for PleasrDAO, however, has refuted Shkreli’s counterclaims.

“Mr. Shkreli’s approach throughout this case has been to distract and delay, with actions that the court has consistently and strongly rejected,” Cooper said in a statement shared with Rolling Stone. “These counterclaims will meet the same fate. They are untimely, non-cognizable, and oddly, claim that Mr. Shkreli retained rights to the album when he was under a court order to forfeit all of his rights in his criminal prosecution.”