George Clinton is a living legend and a Funk music pioneer whose sway and influence carry heavy resonance in modern times. George Clinton, the mind behind the P-Funk (Parliament and Funkadelic) music collectives, is suing Universal Music Group for withheld royalties totaling just over $1 million.
Music Business Worldwide reports that George Clinton, 84, filed the lawsuit on May 15 at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. Clinton alleges that Universal Music Group (UMG) breached his contract and claims that the label is holding more than $1.1. million in frozen royalties.
Clinton added in the filing that UMG applied a third-party copyright dispute as a means to withhold his royalties from recorded music, which also includes recordings that were not connected to the aforementioned dispute.
The third-party copyright dispute is connected to the estate of George Bernard Worrell Jr., the Parliament-Funkadelic keyboardist who passed in 2016. The estate staked a claim that the late musician should be viewed as owning half of some sound recordings. UMG was named in that dispute but was dismissed from the case in October 2023.
Clinton won a legal victory in Michigan in September 2025 after being granted a summary judgment, while ruling that the estate’s claims were time-barred under the Copyright Act’s statute of limitations. Despite this, Clinton’s side says that UMG is still holding the royalties from those songs connected to the dispute.
“This is a straightforward breach of contract case arising from UMG’s decision to withhold 100% of royalties payable to Plaintiff under governing recording agreements based on a third-party lawsuit to which UMG is not a party, in which UMG faces no claim, in which UMG could incur no liability, and in which the third party has now lost on summary judgment,” the complaint states.
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