Ono Wins Fight To Keep Lennon Tapes Private

JOHN LENNON's widow YOKO ONO has won a legal bid to stop a video company from airing footage of the late Beatle smoking marijuana.

The nine-hour film - owned by Massachusetts-based World Wide Video - also shows Lennon discussing putting the hallucinogenic drug LSD in former U.S. President Richard Nixon's tea.

The company claims 24 raw tapes showing three days in Lennon's life in February 1970 - weeks prior to the Beatles' breakup - do not belong to Ono and attempted to sue her for copyright infringement.

Last month (Apr08), Lennon's widow filed a lawsuit to try and ban the video from the public domain.

On Wednesday (21May08) U.S. District Court Judge Rya Zobel ruled in favour of Ono on two counts.

Zobel told the court that Ono did not do anything constituting infringement - from performing copyrighted work publicly, or distributing or publicly displaying the videos.

He said: "What the plaintiff suggests just doesn't fit. It seems to me the defendant's motion is well taken because there was no infringement."

World Wide Video, which paid more than $1 million (GBP500,000) for the footage almost premiered it last year (07), but it scrapped the screening following an order from Ono's legal team.