A Guy Named Brian Camelio Wants A Cut Of Your Fan Funded Project

(UPDATED) On February 8, 2011, ex-Journey studio musician and record producer Brian Camelio was awarded U.S. Patent No. 7,885,887 – "Methods and apparatuses for financing and marketing a creative work" which he assigned to his Fan Funded, LLC , the operater of a company called ArtistShare. Since then Camelio repeately contacted fan funder KickStarter "to discuss ArtistShare's patent and software licensing terms for Kickstarter."  Now Kickstarter is headed to court to protect a platform that it and others like PledgeMusic have used to help hundreds of musicians and other creatives fund projects.

Fan funding has quickly become an important tool for indie and d.i.y. artists.  Amanda Palmer and husband Neil Gaiman just rasied $133,341 from 3873 "backers" on Kickstarter.  Established artists like Killing Joke and Gang Of Four are currently raising funds on PledgeMusic alongside brand new d.i.y. artists. A new fan funding player RockStar Motel leaves beta today.

"I have always maintained that all music is fan funded. It always has been. The argument here seems to be about the timing of when this is achieved i.e. after the record is made, during it's making or once it's made, says PledgeMusic founder Benji Rogers. "We opted out of being a 'fan or crowd' funding company early on to focus on the direct-to-fan offering because simply funding things didn't really appeal to us as first and foremost a music company. It seems to me to be a shame that it has come to this for both our friends Kickstarter & AritstShare"