The Producers Guild of America (PGA) said yesterday (6) that itwould immediately begin to seek court injunctions against studios anddistributors who engaged in the increasingly prevalent use of counterfeit"produced by" credits.

Speaking at the Los Angeles launch of the Truth In Creditscampaign, PGA president Kathleen Kennedy said the PGA was no longer prepared tosuffer such "egregious" behaviour.

"Truth In Credits is aimed at only at the genuinely deceptivecredits, instances where an individual receives a credit despite doing a trulynegligible amount of work," Kennedy told reporters.

None of the PGA top brass at the launch named particular offendersin the film industry, however reference was made to the "Milli Vanillisyndrome", named after the disgraced pop duo who were exposed in 1990 forfalsely claiming they had performed vocals on their album.

Kennedy said the PGA had suffered over the last two decadesbecause unlike its sister guilds the DGA and WGA it is not a labour union andlacked collective bargaining power with the studios.

Because of this, she continued, the PGA was unable to protectcredits, a situation she said the studios had exploited by using theunregulated producer credit "as a form of currency".

The PGA has distributed guidelines on producing credits that havebeen issued to the studios and networks. It is in the process of asking everystudio, production company and network to insert a clause into producercontracts obliging the parties to abide by the PGA's Code of Credits, andKennedy said the response so far had been positive.

The proposed clause stipulates that regardless of what it says inanyone's contract, the PGA will have the final determination on creditentitlement in the case of controversy or dispute.

The PGA will apply for an injunction against any studio that doesnot abide by the criteria and persists in handing out counterfeit credits.Studios and distributors will be named on the injunction rather thanindividuals.

However damages or any other legal remedies will not be soughtunder the campaign, which applies only to counterfeit producer credits and notthose claimed by executive, associate or co-producers.

Sources close tothe PGA said organisation officials were already eying potential offenders andspeculated that an announcement of the first injunction would be forthcoming.