Legal fees for Steve Ross for rights to Bob Ross
Have you all seen the Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal and Greed documentary on Netflix? My wife and I watched this documentary last night and were outraged about how the Kowalskis have taken ownership of the Bob Ross name.
In case you have not seen the documentary, the breakdown is as such. The Kowalskis owned the Bob Ross shows and branded paints, brushes and other items with the Bob Ross name and image. They created a Bob Ross instructional program teaching painters to emulate the Bob Ross artistic style. Where they went wrong is that then they started squeezing out competition, such as how they stole the artistic style of Gary and Kathwren Jenkins and then were able to strong arm their paint distributor and eventually got their show cancelled. Then towards the end of Bob Ross's life, they tried to get him to sign over his name to them. Bob Ross refused and set up ownership of his name to his son Steve Ross (49%) and his half brother, Jimmie Cox (51%). Upon the death of Bob, the Kowalskis sued for the rights to ownership of the name. Jimmie Cox, who owned the majority to those rights, then signed over those rights to the Kowalskis instead of trying to fight the suit. They took everything from Steve Ross; the paintings, brushes and even the palette that Bob Ross used. Fast forward a few years and Steve Ross wanted to start a business but was not technically allowed to use his own name. So he proactively sued the Kowalskis, It was during this suit that he learned of the actions of Jimme Cox and lost his case.
What this fundraiser is for? Steve's attorney advised that for about $90,000 they could file an appeal and they were confident that they would be able to win the appeal. Personally, I do not know all of the details of the case but I would be happy to get this GoFundMe going so that they can give it a shot!
Update: I also want to be clear that this is a donation and we plan on leaving it 100 percent up to Steve Ross on how these funds will be used. There will be no requirement that he use the funds for the purpose of filing the appeal. But.... We would like you to go for it!
For more details about this campaign, please visit our blog announcement. I will post any updates to both this GoFundMe site and my personal site.
https://driese.com/steve-ross-bob-ross-gofundme/
My name is Richard Driese. I have no personal connections to the Ross family but I am adamant that any money given to this fund will make its way to Steve Ross. Let's get this thing going! Steve Ross deserves the rights to his father's name and image.
