Drake and LeBron James sued for $10 million over rights for Hockey documentary Black Ice

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Kelly Rissman

US News Reporter

Drake and LeBron James are being sued for $10m (£8.6m) over the “intellectual property rights” for Hockey documentary Black Ice.

It has been reported that former NBA executive director Billy Hunter has filed a lawsuit in Manhattan state Supreme Court against Drake, James, and their business partners.

“While the defendants LeBron James, Drake and Maverick Carter [LeBron’s business partner] are internationally known and renowned in their respective fields of basketball and music, it does not afford them the right to steal another’s intellectual property,” the lawsuit states.

The documentary, which is set to debut at the Toronto International Film Festival on 10 September, is based on George and Darril Fosty’s book Black Ice: The Lost History of the Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes, 1895 to 1925.

According to the legal documents, Hunter holds “the exclusive legal rights to produce any film about the Coloured Hockey League that existed from 1895 to the 1930s.”

The suit also says Hunter paid the authors a total of $265k (£228k) for the movie rights to the story.

“I don’t think they believed the property rights would be litigated. They thought I would go away. They gambled,” Hunter told the New York Post.

The Independent has contacted Drake and James’s representatives for comment.

This lawsuit comes a few months after Drake and James surprised a high school basketball player and his mother with $100,000 (£75,800).

Drake and James invited a young basketball player named Michael Evbagharu and his mother to Harbour 60 restaurant in Toronto.

In a video posted on social media, the rapper can be seen taking out a wad of cash and giving it to Evbagharu’s mother.

“On behalf of me and my brother [LeBron] and Stake, we wanted to give you this, it’s $100,000,” Drake says. “Hopefully it makes this journey a little easier.”