Eric Clapton Wins Lawsuit Against Widow Selling Bootleg Album for $11

Eric Clapton went after a woman who was trying to hawk one of his CDs — a bootleg one, no less — for about $11 … and now he’s won, meaning she’s gotta pay a lot more than that.

Deutsche Welle reports a judgement was filed in Clapton’s favor earlier this week at a court in the Düsseldorf area of Germany … where he’d sued this 55-year-old widow, who says her late husband bought the album years ago at a record store — arguing she didn’t know it was fake or infringing on his copyright.

The woman was reportedly trying to sell it on eBay for less than $12 — something Eric and his team apparently caught wind of somehow, and decided to fight it tooth and nail.

Word is, they’d reached out this lady … demanding she take down her eBay sale — but word is, she told Eric and co. to kick rocks and to stop harassing her. The Guardian reports she even said if they were that bothered with the $11 sale, then go ahead and sue her.

Well, sue her he did … and after her arguments of ignorance fell flat with the court following an appeal — issuing an injunction preventing her from hawking the thing. She’s also gotta pay the legal fees of both parties, which reports say amounts to about $3,800. If she keeps it up on eBay, she could be fine hundreds of thousands … or even go to prison for half a year.

Clapton’s team told the Guardian, “Germany is a country where sales of bootleg and counterfeit CDs are rife, which damages the industry and customers with poor quality and misleading recordings. Along with a number of other major artists and record companies, over a number of years Eric Clapton has, through German lawyers, successfully pursued hundreds of bootleg cases in the German courts under routine German copyright procedures.”