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Google has been ordered to pay Sonos $32.5 million for infringing one of its smart speaker patents, marking a significant development in a long-fought legal war between the two companies that’s spanned more than three years and multiple lawsuits.
Filed in a San Francisco court on Friday (May 26), the jury verdict awarded Sonos $2.30 for each of the more than 14 million Google devices that were sold incorporating the patented technology.
The jury found that Google had not infringed a second patent at issue in the case.
Sonos first sued Google in January 2020, claiming the tech giant had infringed multiple patents for its smart speaker technology after gaining access to it through a 2013 partnership under which Sonos integrated Google Play Music into its products. Just two years after that partnership was reached, Sonos alleged that Google then “flooded the market” with cheaper competing products (under the now-defunct Chromecast Audio line) that willfully infringed its patented multi-room technology. Sonos additionally claimed that Google had since expanded its use of Sonos technology in more than a dozen other products, including the Google Home, Nest and Pixel lines.
“We are deeply grateful for the jury’s time and diligence in upholding the validity of our patents and recognizing the value of Sonos’s invention of zone scenes,” said Sonos in a statement on the verdict. “This verdict re-affirms that Google is a serial infringer of our patent portfolio, as the International Trade Commission has already ruled with respect to five other Sonos patents. In all, we believe Google infringes more than 200 Sonos patents and today’s damages award, based on one important piece of our portfolio, demonstrates the exceptional value of our intellectual property. Our goal remains for Google to pay us a fair royalty for the Sonos inventions it has appropriated.”
In its own statement, a Google spokesperson said, “This is a narrow dispute about some very specific features that are not commonly used. Of the six patents Sonos originally asserted, only one was found to be infringed, and the rest were dismissed as invalid or not infringed. We have always developed technology independently and competed on the merit of our ideas. We are considering our next steps.”
The legal battle between the two tech companies has been protracted, with both sides going on the offensive at different points. In June 2020, Google filed suit against Sonos, alleging the smart speaker maker had actually infringed several of its own patents. Sonos subsequently filed two more lawsuits alleging that Google had infringed several additional patents it held.
Sonos filed one of those two cases with the U.S. International Trade Commission, which ruled in January 2022 that Google had infringed a total of five of Sonos’ audio technology patents and barred it from importing the infringing products from China. However, the commission also found that Google had successfully redesigned its products to avoid the Sonos patents and could continue selling those reworked versions in U.S. stores — an allowance Sonos had fought to prevent.
In August 2022, Google fired another volley with two additional lawsuits, claiming the smaller company used seven different patented Google technologies to instill the so-called “magic” in Sonos software.
Stock markets ended the week on a positive note as investors showed optimism believing that Congress can negotiate a deal to increase the nation’s debt limit and avoid a historic default. The S&P 500 increased 1.3% to $4,205.45, up 0.3% on the week, while the Nasdaq composite climbed 2.2% on Friday (May 26) to finish […]
As 2023 heads into summer, multiple signs point to a healthy and growing live music business for the rest of the year. In recent weeks, executives from the publicly traded concert promotion and ticketing companies have signaled that surging consumer demand won’t slow down, and there will be enough tours to satiate music fans’ appetite for live events.
Demand has been strong “and is showing no signs of letting up,” said Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino during the company’s May 4 earnings call. Live Nation expects to sell more than 600 million tickets in 2023, up from 550 million in 2022. To date, the concert promoter has sold more than 100 million tickets to Live Nation events, a 20% increase from the prior-year period, and expects to host a record number of fans in 2023.
Vivid Seats, the publicly traded secondary ticketing marketplace, shares Live Nation’s sentiment. “Consumers continued to crave live experiences in the first quarter,” said CEO Stan Chia during a May 9 earnings call, “and we believe this trend will continue for many years.” Vivid Seats does business primarily in the U.S. while German promoter and ticketing provider CTS Eventim focuses on Europe. “Both in Germany and internationally, we are pursuing organic growth and anticipate that our business performance will continue on its successful course,” said CTS Eventim CEO Klaus-Peter Schulenberg in the quarterly results released May 24 that reiterated the positive outlook in its 2022 annual report of “moderately higher earnings” for the live entertainment segment 2023.
The concert business is meeting — and perhaps surpassing — some lofty expectations. In 2022, as the concert business exited the pandemic, the widespread belief was that pent-up demand for in-person experiences would drive the concert business beyond pre-pandemic levels. That turned out to be true. Concert promoter Live Nation posted record revenue of $6.2 billion in the third quarter that was 67% above the same period in 2019. What’s more, the volume of fans returning to concert venues was augmented by an unmatched willingness to absorb higher prices. Frenzied demand — and sky-high prices on the secondary market — for tours by Taylor Swift, Beyonce and Bruce Springsteen have showed A-list artists have yet to find their ceiling on prices.
Concert promoters have posted strong quarterly earnings that fit their narratives. Live Nation’s first-quarter revenue was up 71% to $3.1 billion. CTS Eventim’s online ticket sales increased 58% to 18 million as consolidated revenue improved 163% to 366.2 million euros ($393 million). At Vivid Seats, which also does business in major sports such as baseball and basketball, first quarter revenue grew 23.2% to $161 million and adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization doubled to $42.4 million.
Investors absorb past earnings history while figuring out what to expect in the future, and according to JP Morgan analyst David Karnovky they often ask two questions about Live Nation: First, is there enough supply to meet growing, healthy demand? Yes, Live Nation president and CFO Joe Berchtold said at JP Morgan’s Global Technology, Media and Communications conference on Tuesday. That’s because global streaming platforms such as Spotify and social media apps like Instagram and TikTok allow artists to build global followings in ways that weren’t previously possible, he explained. K-pop and other up-and-coming genres of music “that maybe once were regional are now going global,” he said, and artists that used to sell out mid-sized venues are now selling out stadiums. “So, you’re seeing that supply continue to build.”
The second thing investors want to know is how demand will respond during a softer economy. Live Nation closely follows the indicators — such as on-sales show closings — Berchtold said, “but we’re not seeing anything that gives us pause.” Separately, Berchtold noted that Live Nation’s research indicates getting back to concerts are one of fans’ top priorities after the pandemic and will be “one of the last things they’re going to cut back on.”
Vivid Seats CFO Lawrence Fey also addressed the possibility of an economic downturn — a scenario becoming increasingly likely in the U.S. should Congress fail to find a compromise to raise the debt ceiling by early June. “[T]here’s a lot of chatter and concern out there” that demand will weaken “in the not-too-distant future,” said Fey, “but it continues to be the case that we’re seeing very robust demand across our event categories [and] across price points.” Beyond the consistently strong demand, Vivid Seats has “been pleasantly surprised by the supply calendar,” particularly a concert schedule that includes recently announced tours by Drake and Aerosmith, he added, “and [that] gives us optimism.”
The U.S. Department of Justice is urging the U.S. Supreme Court to avoid a case alleging Google stole millions of song lyrics from the music database Genius, calling it a “poor vehicle” for a high court showdown.
Genius — a platform that lets users add and annotate lyrics — wants the justices to revive its lawsuit, which claims that Google improperly used the site’s carefully-transcribed content for its search results, after the case was dismissed by a lower court last year.
But in a brief filed Tuesday (May 23), the U.S. Solicitor General told the Supreme Court to steer clear. It said the case was a “poor vehicle” for reviewing the issues in the case, and that the lower court did not appear to have done anything particularly novel when it dismissed the case against Google.
“In the view of the United States, the petition for a writ of certiorari should be denied,” the government wrote.
Genius sued the tech giant in 2019, claiming Google had stolen the site’s carefully-transcribed content for its own “information boxes” in search results, essentially free-riding on the “time, labor, systems and resources” that go into creating such a service. In a splashy twist, Genius said it had used a secret code buried within lyrics that spelled out REDHANDED to prove Google’s wrongdoing.
Though it sounds like a copyright case, Genius didn’t actually accuse Google of stealing any intellectual property. That’s because it doesn’t own any; songwriters and publishers own the rights to lyrics, and both Google and Genius pay for the same licenses to display them. Instead, Genius argued it had spent time and money transcribing and compiling “authoritative” versions of lyrics, and that Google had breached the site’s terms of service by “exploiting” them without permission.
But in March, that distinction proved fatal for Genius. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit dismissed the case, ruling that only the actual copyright owners — songwriters or publishers — could have filed such a case, not a site that merely transcribed the lyrics. In technical terms, the court said the case was “preempted” by federal copyright law, meaning that the accusations from Genius were so similar to a copyright claim that they could only have been filed that way.
In taking the case to the Supreme Court, Genius argued the ruling would be a disaster for websites that spend time and money to aggregate user-generated content online. Such companies should be allowed to protect that effort against clear copycats, the company said, even if they don’t hold the copyright. “Big-tech companies like Google don’t need any assists from an overly broad view of copyright preemption,” the company wrote.
Such petitions are always a long shot since the Supreme Court takes less than 2% of the 7,000 cases it receives each year. But in December, the justices asked the DOJ to weigh in on whether it should take the Genius case.
In Tuesday’s filing, the DOJ said firmly that it should not — arguing, among other things, that the lower court’s ruling for Google had been largely correct. Though the agency had quibbles with some of the lower court’s analysis, it said Genius was essentially using contract law to claim the same rights as a copyright owner — the exact scenario in which such claims can be “preempted” by federal law.
“In substance, petitioner asserts a right to prevent commercial copying of its lyric transcriptions by all persons who gain access to them, without regard to any express manifestation of consent by website visitors,” the agency wrote.
The Supreme Court will now decide whether or not to hear the case; a decision on that question should arrive in the next several months. A spokesperson for Genius did not immediately return a request for comment on the DOJ’s filing.
Read the DOJ’s entire brief HERE.
LJ Stoll was named GM/vp of A&R at The Hard Working Record Company, a new Nashville-based record label from Big Machine Label Group (BMLG) and management company Hard 8 Working Group. The venture was struck between BMLG president/CEO/founder Scott Borchetta and Hard 8 co-founders Dirk Hemsath and Rich Egan, along with partners David Conway and Mike Bachta. “Rich and I had been toying with the idea of starting a label again, since that’s the world we both came from,” said Hemsath in a statement. “We had been working closely with Scott and Big Machine on the artist Kidd G and Scott mentioned he wanted to start a more pop-leaning imprint and that’s the world we’ve been in heavily for the last few years, most recently building pop star Tate McRae.”
Hipgnosis Songs Fund global head of song management Nick Jarjour exited his role at the company “as I embark on an exciting new chapter in my journey,” the executive wrote on LinkedIn. “During my tenure at Hipgnosis, I had the honor of working alongside a visionary leader and mentor, Merck Mercuriadis who has achieved remarkable feats for songwriters and revolutionized the music industry for future generations,” he continued. Jarjour will continue serving as CEO of his label, publishing and creative agency JarjourCo.
Andrew Spence was promoted to general counsel at Sony Music Publishing UK, where he will oversee business and legal affairs strategies and initiatives on behalf of the company and its roster while also offering guidance and counsel on its legal and operational matters. The London-based executive will continue reporting to Sony Music Publishing UK president/co-managing director, UK/senior vp of international David Ventura and UK co-managing director Tim Major. He was previously head of legal and business affairs.
Edith Bo was named head of A&R at Rostrum Records, where she will oversee the overall direction of A&R strategy and develop strategic branding partnerships, working closely with Rostrum’s marketing team. Bo joins the company from SoundCloud, where she served as senior manager of publishing. She can be reached at edith@rostrumrecords.com.
Rob Segal joined The Feldman Agency (TFA) as partner/president of TFA Inc. Segal previously founded his own agency, Segal Communications, which became one of Canada’s largest promotional and licensing agencies, with clients including Sony, Ford, Marvel, HP and Dreamworks. In his new role, he will lead the agency in fostering new business, driving marketing campaigns and elevating its brand presence. Based at the company’s Toronto office, he can be reached at rob@feldman-agency.com.
Frederik Boutahar was named vp of A&R at Columbia Records Germany, Switzerland & Austria (GSA), which he will lead alongside vp Alexandra Falken. Boutahar will report to Sony Music Entertainment GSA CEO Patrick Mushatsi-Kareba. He joins the company from TwoSides, where he served as MD. He can be reached at frederik.boutahar@sonymusic.com.
Sebastian Mair joined digital rights management company Muserk as head of business development APAC. He will oversee the company’s business throughout the Asia-Pacific region. Based in Tokyo, Mair developed a relationship with Muserk via his company Music Solutions, which develops brand partnerships and VIP packages for artists touring Asia. He can be reached at sebastian.mair@muserk.com.
Metal label Nuclear Blast Records restructured its A&R department, promoting Nathan Barley Phillips and Shawn Keith to head of A&R, Europe and head of A&R, North America, respectively. Elsewhere, Tommy Jones was promoted to label manager, North America, which includes A&R responsibilities for Nuclear Blast’s existing roster in the region. A&R Jens Prueter was also named to the newly created role of head of catalogue/senior A&R. The label was acquired by Believe in 2018. Keith can be reached at Shawn@nuclearblastusa.com.
Jen Hubbard was appointed to the newly created role of director of sync A&R at Concord Music Publishing, where she will develop and manage Concord’s U.S. songwriter roster for the purpose of synch activity. She will serve as the bridge between the company’s A&R and synch teams. Based in Nashville, Hubbard reports to senior vp of A&R Brad Kennard with support from vp of publishing sync Kourtney Kirkpatrick and executive vp of global sync Brooke Primont. Hubbard previously served as director of A&R.
Avery King, formerly director of publicity at Elicity PR, formed her own public relations firm, King Publicity. She brings her longtime clients Carter Faith, Aaron Watson, Austin Burke and Anna Rose to the new operation. King can be reached at avery@kingpublicity.com.
Steve Eckerson was named GM at ASM Global’s San Diego-based venue Pechanga Arena. He joins from Mechanics Bank Arena, Theater and Convention Center, where he’s served as GM since 2016. Eckerson succeeds Steve Tadlock in the role. He can be reached at SEckerson@pechangaarenasd.com.
UTA announced the promotions of several staffers in its music division. Sean Hendrie was elevated to agent while Jack Benson, Eli Hanavan, Maria Kanatous, Elie Low, Cassie Trimble and Sydney Wilke were upped to coordinators.
In early 2011, Miguel was a rising R&B singer who had just released his debut album, All I Want Is You, and was seeing his single “Sure Thing” gain traction on the R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart. The song would eventually reach No. 1 that May, while also climbing to the summit of Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs and peaking at No. 36 on the Hot 100, where it spent 23 weeks between March and August, when it fell from the chart. After 59 weeks on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, it eventually fell from that chart in 2012.
And that was the extent of its chart run — until this year, when a TikTok trend led to an explosion in streams, catapulting it back onto the charts — and to entirely new territory. Earlier this month, “Sure Thing” broke the record for most weeks on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart at 76 (it is now at 78), and this week it achieved a mainstream crossover, 12 years after its initial debut on the charts, by reaching No. 1 on Pop Airplay, the longest trip to the top of that chart from a song’s release in history.
It’s the latest example of older songs being reinvigorated and reaching new chart heights in recent months, following The Weeknd’s “Die For You” (after a remix featuring Ariana Grande) and Lady Gaga’s “Bloody Mary,” which also benefited from a TikTok trend. And it helps RCA senior vp of digital marketing Tarek Al-Hamdouni earn the title of Billboard’s Executive of the Week.
Here, Al-Hamdouni explains how the track came back after such a long break, and how RCA helped spur it into a new realm. “We know activity can spring up at a moment’s notice, and when it does, the best labels are able to move quickly and turn a spark into a flame before it goes out,” Al-Hamdouni says.
This week, Miguel’s “Sure Thing” reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Pop Airplay chart, 12 years after its initial chart run. What key decisions did you make to help make that happen?
The climb to No. 1 began in November of 2022 when we first saw the signs of organic growth and engagement on “Sure Thing” across socials and streaming services. The first major decision came in us validating the opportunity and investing in sustaining the activity across TikTok, Reels, Shorts & Snapchat. The initial goal was to “see how far we could take the trend,” knowing every jump in creations and streams was broadening our listener base and building familiarity, which would eventually result in bigger opportunities.
Miguel attends the 65th GRAMMY Awards on February 05, 2023 in Los Angeles, California.
Matt Winkelmeyer/GI for The Recording Academy
We knew the record was already a favorite among fans since its release, but the key component to this new activity is that it was coming from new listeners. This led us to make the key decision to treat “Sure Thing” as a new record in our marketing efforts, also giving us the new task of turning listeners into fans. To connect the dots, we worked closely with Miguel — who deserves all the credit in the world for leaning in with curiosity, passion and optimism around this new activity — to start to engage with fans and content across socials.
Our promotion team did a fantastic job in following along with all the activity we were generating and timed their impact such that we were already receiving pull from the markets and stations. The last key decision I’ll offer up is the move to leverage the activity around “Sure Thing” to prime the market for new music from Miguel, something that we kicked off with his new single, “Give It To Me.”
In its original run, the song was an R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay hit. Why did the song work at Pop radio this time around?
I think the beauty of an artist like Miguel is that he’s always been ahead of his time. While often thrown into the “R&B” box, his music and artistry have always pulled from diverse corners of the music spectrum. And when you look at the freedom streaming has given Gen Z to bounce from record to record and genre to genre with such ease, it’s no wonder they gravitate towards a forward-thinking artist like Miguel.
It’s also worth noting that the dynamic between data and radio has strengthened at a rapid pace over the last few years. This has given us the opportunity to build our case in advance of an impact, showing the audience potential and, in a lot of ways, letting the story and streams reach critical mass with core Gen Z music fans before taking it to the broader audiences that only radio can reach.
The song’s resurgence originated on TikTok with a sped-up version. How did that come about? How often are these sped-up versions of tracks spawning new life for songs?
The sped-up version of “Sure Thing” emerged purely as organic UGC on TikTok. It wasn’t necessarily a surprise to see the activity come from such an edit, as sped-up sounds have been a trend on TikTok and across UGC for quite some time now. That said, I do think it’s fair to say that sped-up sounds hit a bit of critical mass in early 2023 as we started to see platforms like TikTok create specific playlists centered around the phenomenon, all of which gave us more editorial placements and ways for Miguel to lean in.
The opportunities to breathe new life into a record through a sped-up sound are plentiful, but it’s important to note the viral success of a record like “Sure Thing” is still a huge outlier in terms of how much effect a campaign could have. At this point, I expect most singles to be accompanied by a sped-up version at some point in their life cycle.
This is the latest example of an older track coming back to be a force at radio and in pop culture — something that almost never used to happen. Are you guys increasingly focused on working catalog songs in a similar manner to new songs?
We don’t focus solely on the “catalog” aspect of any record at this point as much as we’re focused on using the influx of data we receive from social and streaming platforms to ensure we never miss an opportunity. We know activity can spring up at a moment’s notice, and when it does, the best labels are able to move quickly and turn a spark into a flame before it goes out.
The reliance on data is important because our core mission as marketers is to create this activity and engagement out of the gate. By collaborating with our internal data teams, we can build tools to monitor the key aspects we believe drive streaming growth while spending the majority of our time and energy collaborating with our artists and building next-level marketing campaigns.
Although to be fair, I think the rediscovery of music by the next generation of listeners is something that has happened for quite some time. Prior to shortform video, syncs played a huge role in this rediscovery, going back to examples like Nick Drake’s “Pink Moon” in Volkswagen’s 2000 Cabrio commercial to the much more recent lift of Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” off the back of its inclusion in season four of Stranger Things.
The song also broke the record for most weeks ever spent on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, now at 78. How did you help market the track beyond radio and TikTok?
Outside of those two platforms, we worked to ensure this record and Miguel’s content was spread far and wide across the internet. We built custom campaigns for Instagram and YouTube, we drove awareness and engagement through savvy ad spends and boost campaigns. And we worked closely with media accounts and press outlets to drive consistent presence in front of a wide range of audiences.
What have you learned from the song’s surprise success that you can use moving forward on other projects and songs?
When you zoom out far enough, you start to see that the equation we’re chasing with a resurgence is new context for a great record with a new, young and engaged audience. Additionally, the benefits of driving engagement through a catalog record doesn’t require the type of success we’re seeing on Miguel to be meaningful. Going forward, we see this as a key way to drive engagement and build demand for new music for any artist with an established catalog.
Previous Executive of the Week: Corey Calder of APG
A Texas grand jury has officially indicted TakeOff’s alleged shooter on murder charges, KHOU reported Thursday (May 25) after receiving confirmation from the Harris County District Attorney’s Office.
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Takeoff (born Kirshnik Khari Ball) was shot and killed during a private party he attended at 810 Billiards & Bowling in downtown Houston with his uncle and bandmate, Quavo, on Nov. 1. The Migos rapper, who was 28 at the time of his death, was killed by “penetrating gunshot wounds of head and torso into arm,” according to a report from the Harris County coroner’s office.
The alleged shooter, Patrick Xavier Clark, was arrested on the east side of Houston the same night and charged with murder. Another man allegedly involved in the incident, 22-year-old Cameron Joshua, was arrested and charged with the unlawful carrying of a weapon. Clark was subsequently released on $1 million bond in January.
The Harris County District Attorney’s Office did not immediately return a request for confirmation on Clark’s indictment. Clark’s attorney, Carl Moore, also did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
In a statement to KHOU, Moore said the indictment was expected, stating, “We would ask people to remember that getting an indictment requires meeting a very, very minimal standard of proof. When we get inside a courtroom and in front of a jury, where we will be able to put on our evidence and cross-examine the state’s witnesses — where the standard of proof is guilt beyond reasonable doubt – we expect the jury will come back with a verdict of not guilty.”
According to court records, following his release on bond, Clark was put under 24/7 house arrest, forbidden from having contact with anyone involved in the incident and required to wear a GPS monitor that would immediately notify prosecutors and defense attorneys of any violations. He was also asked to submit to drug testing and could not drink alcohol, as court records indicate that “alcohol was a factor in the offense.”
As Blake Shelton winds down his 23-season role as a coach on The Voice, he’s far from finished with TV and other content initiatives. Shelton has teamed with showrunner Lee Metzger to form the new production company Lucky Horseshoe Productions, following the success of their collaboration on the TV series Barmageddon. With the production company, […]
Adidas secretly filed a legal action last year in federal court that successfully froze $75 million in bank accounts held by Kanye West’s Yeezy brand after their high-profile split, newly unsealed court documents show.
Federal court records obtained by Billboard show that the case was filed on Nov. 11, just weeks after the German sneaker giant publicly terminated its relationship with the embattled rapper (sometimes known as Ye) in the wake of his antisemitic statements and other erratic behavior.
Adidas filed the case to ensure such funds were not transferred out of Yeezy’s bank accounts while the two companies litigated their business divorce via private arbitration. And a federal judge quickly granted the company’s request for such an “attachment” order on a so-called ex parte basis — meaning the judge issued the freeze without giving Yeezy a chance to make counter-arguments.
“Petitioner has demonstrated that it has satisfied the grounds for an ex parte attachment because the court is satisfied that there is a risk that Yeezy will remove or dissipate assets if notice of this request for attachment is given to Yeezy,” Judge Valerie E. Caproni wrote in her Nov. 11 order freezing the money.
The existence of the litigation was first reported Wednesday evening (May 24) by the legal news outlet Law360.
The newly-revealed litigation with Yeezy is just one piece of a messy breakup for Adidas. With the company sitting on $1.3 billion worth of unsold Yeezys, CEO Bjorn Gulden announced earlier this month that Adidas would begin selling them, but would “donate money to the organizations that help us and were harmed by what Ye said.”
While West himself had previously disclosed that Adidas filed a federal case to freeze assets — he claimed in a November video that the company had “put a $75 million hold” on his bank accounts — the actual existence of the case could not be independently confirmed because it was filed “under seal,” meaning it was not made public like normal legal filings.
But last week, the case and its key documents were unsealed, thanks to another ruling earlier in the month by Judge Caproni. Referencing West’s own comments disclosing the case, the judge said the desire of both sides for “confidentiality” was now outweighed by the public right to access court records.
“Notably, the attachment itself is no longer confidential as Ye discussed Adidas’s decision to ‘freeze’ his accounts in a public interview, and accordingly, no confidentiality interest exists as to the existence of the attachment order,” Judge Caproni wrote on May 9. “The court further finds that any trade secrets or sensitive business information may adequately be protected through redaction.”
Now, the newly-unsealed court docket shows that lawyers for Adidas and Yeezy are currently sparring over whether the asset freeze should remain in place going forward.
In an April filing, Yeezy’s lawyers urged Judge Caproni to undo the freeze, arguing that Adidas had “failed to show that it was ever entitled to such an order in the first place.” Yeezy’s lawyers said Adidas had made procedural errors in securing the order and had not provided enough proof that it needed the freeze to remain in place.
“Adidas has offered no evidence that Yeezy is currently insolvent or that it has made any effort to conceal its assets or put them beyond Adidas’s reach in the event Adidas obtains an arbitral award against Yeezy,” attorney Peter D. Hawkes wrote for the brand. “Nor has Adidas offered anything more than speculation that, in the absence of attachment, collection of any arbitral award would be more challenging.”
Adidas strongly disagrees. In its own brief filed in early May, the company argued that West had demonstrated a “pattern of volatile behavior” and was in “severe financial stress,” imperiling Adidas’s ability to recover the funds the company believes it will win in the pending arbitration battle.
“There is every indication that if released, Yeezy will spend them, misusing Adidas’s property and rendering an award against them ineffectual,” the company wrote.
Adidas also warned that, if the $75 million is released, West’s conduct had severely harmed his own ability to earn it back in other ways. The company rattled off a list of alleged incidents, including West “stating his admiration of Hitler” and “suggesting that Jewish people ‘are used by the Chinese’ to control Black people.”
“Ye [has] further diminished the value of his endorsement and commercial opportunities by continuing to make racist and incendiary statements,” Adidas’s lawyers wrote.
A lawyer for Yeezy did not return requests for comment on Thursday. A spokesman for Adidas declined to comment.
Now that the pandemic is over, “it is anything but ‘business as usual’” at CISAC, the international trade organization for copyright collecting societies, according to director general Gadi Oron in its 2023 annual report.
In a time of change for collecting societies, which bring in a combined 9.6 billion euros a year, CISAC’s priorities include lobbying governments in support of member societies, continuing its campaign to support the ISWC code system to identify works, and navigating the challenges of AI, which Oron calls “our biggest priority now in terms of policy.”
The biggest news in the report about a particular market is the success of Autodia, the Greek collecting society that has become prominent since the 2018 dissolution of AEPI. “In 2018, I gave a presentation to the board [of CISAC and said we must do something,” Oron remembers. AEPI’s collapse was epic, complete with a 2017 police raid and a failure to pay out 42.5 million euros (more than the total amount it distributed some years), according to an audit ordered by the Greek Ministry of Culture. Oron feared the potential collapse of a market that had been worth about 50 million euros a year in the late 1990s, so he asked the CISAC’s board to support a plan to fund and help Autodia, which was then a small nonprofit society that in 2018 collected less than a million euros.
In 2022, Autodia collected 16.2 million euros, and it now collects for all three major publishers, BMG, and many of its sister societies, according to CEO Margarita Panagiotopoulou. “We are growing fast and gaining market share,” Panagiotopoulou says, “and that is on track to continue.”
Autodia now faces competition from EDEM, which mostly represents Greek repertoire and took in about 8 million euros last year.
The first phase of CISAC’s plan was to get Autodia loans from its member societies and send to Athens consultant Declan Rudden, who became interim CEO of Autodia to get the society running. He helped make reciprocal agreements with international societies and court publishers, as well as compete with EYED, a government-controlled entity that was designated as the temporary successor to AEPI. (Some major publishers originally signed with EYED but most of them are now with Autodia.) One day, as Rudden and team were putting together desks in the Autodia office, it was raided by the Greek department of labor and fined for keeping employees after 5pm without notifying them in advance. (This is illegal in Greece, but raids are uncommon.) “They did everything to make our life difficult,” remembers Rudden, who runs the consultancy SaorServices.
Gradually, the local team took over, and Autodia took in more than 4 million euros by 2019, then more than 12 million euros by 2022, as the pandemic subsided. “The contribution of CISAC was very important,” Panagiotopoulou says, in terms of funding, legitimacy and lobbying both the Greek government and songwriters themselves.
Greece is still a contested market. “Market share is a matter of disagreement,” says EDEM COO George Myzalis. (Panagiotopoulou says Autodia has more than 85% market share, but the respective royalty collection numbers imply a lower number.) Along the way, the technology company Orfium, which has some operations based in Athens, almost entered the market as well, but it ultimately withdrew. (The company operates in other sectors and did not respond to a request for comment.) Right now, venues and broadcasters in Greece need licenses from both Autodia and EDEM, especially if they want to play both the international repertoire that Autodia dominates as well as the Greek compositions that EDEM tends to have.
Some big publishers believe that the growing success of Autodia limits the possibilities for the kind of direct licensing model that they see as more efficient. One idea that at least some of them favored was to establsh EDEM as an organization that would offer more optionality by requiring less exclusive grants of rights – and a model for what they believe could be a more efficient future for the publishing business. As Autodia grows, that is becoming less likely – which some publishers see as a wasted opoortunity and other societies and some other publishers and songwriters see as a win for the current structure, which for all of its complexity offers more of a balance of power between big players and small ones.
The only things most executives seem to agree on is that the situation in Greece is far better than it was under AEPI and that it is getting better, even if it’s not where it should be. “AEPI was a disaster,” says Peermusic European president Nigel Elderton. “Autodia have their act together and they’re paying royalties through and they’re starting to grow.”
At a time when the traditional collecting society model is being challenged by direct licensing and a growing number of for-profit royalty organizations, both the other societies that supported Autodia and the publishers that favored another model agree that the implications of the society’s success go beyond Greece. Now that CISAC has showed it can help turn around a society in a market that’s perceived to be dysfunctional, it could potentially do so again.
“This was 10 times harder than I could have imagined,” Oron says. “But we’ve proven to ourselves that we can do it. Whether we can do it in other countries depends, but we have proof that we can do it.”