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Kickstarter is no longer contending with a book author who took the crowdfunding service to court after having a project canceled.
Kristin “M.K.” Ducote and her husband Chapman Ducote, a professional race car driver, filed the lawsuit earlier this year. The Ducotes used Kickstarter’s platform to raise funds they say were needed to publish a book, Naked Paddock, about life, love and drama in the world of professional motorsports. The two were invited to appear on Keeping Up With the Kardashians spinoff Kourtney and Khloe Take Miami and use the reality TV appearance to launch their Kickstarter project. But five days after the project was put up, Kickstarter pulled it.
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The Ducotes sued for breach of contract, fraudulent inducement and unjust enrichment. They demanded more than $1 million in lost sales for the book. The lawsuit has now been settled and dismissed. From the looks of court papers filed on Thursday in a New York federal court, it appears that Kickstarter can be declared the winner.
No money has changed hands, and a stipulation states the Ducotes “discovered and acknowledged that certain of the allegations in the Complaints relating to Kickstarter’s suspension of the Project are incorrect, and that Kickstarter’s decision to suspend the Project was in accordance with its Community Guidelines and Terms of Use.”
The court papers also say that Kickstarter suspended the project after receiving complaints from members of its community and that it was determined that the project was violating certain Kickstarter Community Guidelines.
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Kickstarter won’t get more specific, but the suspension might have had something to do with promotion.
“Spread the word but don’t spam,” Kickstarter tells its project creators. A couple of the no-no’s include using link-bombing forums and promoting a project on other projects’ pages.
On a separate page, Kickstarter has yet more rules for project creators. Among the highlights are that creators can’t promise to donate a portion of funds to a cause, can’t raise money to buy real estate, can’t sell equity, and can’t offer genetically modified organisms as a reward. That last one was added at the end of July soon after a project called “Glowing Plants” raised half-a-million dollars. Around the same time, Spike Lee kickstarted “The Newest Hottest Spike Lee Joint.”
E-mail: Eriq.Gardner@THR.com
Twitter: @eriqgardner
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