The estate of pop star Prince says that a dispute with a producer who has sought to put out unreleased material by the artist has been resolved in its favour.

The release of an EP called Deliverance was announced by iTunes in April 2017. However, shortly after the announcement, previews of the tracks were taken down from the internet when a Court in Minnesota granted Prince’s estate and Paisley Park Enterprises an interim injunction to prevent the publication or dissemination of unreleased recordings.

The defendant to the claim was sound engineer George Boxill, who had worked on the EP. It was alleged that he had breached a confidentiality agreement made with Prince, and was not authorised to make the songs available for sale because the Prince sessions remained the artist’s property.

When announcing the EP, Boxill said that ‘we decided to go independent because that’s what Prince would have wanted.’

Now Prince’s estate are relying on Boxill’s failure to respond to the claim by the deadline of 23 January 2018 as meaning that their claim has succeeded. As a result, they are seeking a permanent injunction prohibiting Boxill from releasing the music.

In spite of the legal wrangle over the material recorded with Boxill, the estate’s adviser, Troy Carter, has promised fans that there will be unreleased material available imminently.

He told Variety that ‘We’ve got great projects in the works that I’m excited to talk about. So the answer is yes, there will be unreleased Prince music coming soon’.