The estate of legendary reggae star Bob Marley is engaged in a fierce struggle with the Universal Music Group over the rights to his work: Last month, Universal signed a deal with Verizon Wireless to allow the company to become the exclusive distributor for ringtones featuring the work of Tuff Gong (Marley's nickname -- just demonstrating that I'm a big fan). Marley's family threatened to sue but then Verizon took most of the Marley ringtones of its site.

But then a spokesman for the family issued a vitriolic statement and, in an act of retaliation better suited to a playground than a boardroom, Verizon put the ringtones back up on the site.

According to a Verizon Spokesman, "We had earlier this week decided to take the content down temporarily to give the Marley estate and Universal time to work out their differences. Now, in light of that statement, we'll be putting that content back up tomorrow."

So now the Marley's say the lawsuit is back on. In one of his classic songs, Marley asked "Is this love - is this love - is this love - Is this love that I'm feelin'?"

Not much love going on between Marley and his estate right now.

Bob Marley's estate not too happy about ringtones originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 14 Sep 2007 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.