For rock-concert and memorabilia site Wolfgang's Vault and its owner Bill Sagan, the lawsuit filed against it last month by several rock legends amounts to little more than a trip down "Shakedown Street."

The suit, filed by members of the Grateful Dead, Led Zeppelin, the Doors, and Carlos Santana, accuses the site of streaming concert recordings for free from its site, without permission, and using those recordings to sell memorabilia and concert posters.

But in a press release issued this week, Sagan's attorney, Michael Elkin, said the suit was without merit and a feeble attempt to squeeze a cut of the site's revenue.

"The lawsuit has nothing to do with artists' rights and everything to do with others in the industry seeking to seize profits and shakedown Wolfgang's Vault and its owner, Bill Sagan," Elkin said in the statement. "We believe while this lawsuit will attract a lot of headlines it has no basis or fact in law whatsoever. Wolfgang's Vault bought all of this decades-old material legally, paid their rightful owner, and own all the rights necessary to conduct its business. We fully expect to be victorious in the court of law."

The plaintiffs are seeking to stop Sagan from selling concert posters, T-shirts, and other items that originally belonged to legendary concert promoter Bill Graham. Sagan acquired the collection in 2003 for $6 million from Clear Channel and named his site after Graham's birth name, Wolfgang Grajonca.

The lawsuit contends that the site is using free streams of concerts by the plaintiffs' bands, as well as the likes of Neil Young, Stevie Wonder, Bob Marley, and Jimi Hendrix, to incite customers to buy photography, posters, and handbills from those concerts.

"Sagan simply doesn't have the legal rights to exploit and profit from the extraordinary success of these musicians," said attorney Jeff Reeves in a statement upon filing the lawsuit last month in US District Court in San Francisco. "This memorabilia was created in the first place for the purposes of promoting concerts and as gifts for fans and concert crew. Graham himself did not have the right to sell, reproduce, or otherwise exploit these materials as a promoter, and neither does Sagan, who was not authorized to purchase these materials and who has absolutely no connection to the artists or their music."

The crux of the case seems to be whether or not Graham had the right to sell any of the merchandise he had collected over the years, and whether that right passed on to Sagan.

"The purchase allowed the company the rights to open the archive as they deemed fit," Elkin said. "Wolfgang's Vault is determined that the vault remains open, and intends to do everything in its power to keep it that way."