Legal News
Daddy Yankee and his estranged wife Mireddys González reached a partial agreement in their first court hearing on Friday (Dec. 20) over his allegations that she withdrew $100 million in funds from two of his companies without authorization. Following private negotiations, both parties agreed that the artist born Ramón Luis Ayala Rodríguez will regain the […]
A criminal investigation has been launched into suspected fraud at U.K. collecting society PPL after the organization discovered “suspicious activity” on a small number of member accounts.
PPL said one staff member had been dismissed following an internal investigation it carried out over several months earlier this year. The alleged crime is now being investigated by The Metropolitan Police, the CMO said in a short statement.
“We recently became aware of suspicious activity on a small number of member accounts. We immediately conducted an internal investigation, and one employee was dismissed,” said a spokesperson Thursday (Dec.19). The organization said it was “working with the limited number of impacted members to rectify accounts.”
PPL is the second largest of the United Kingdom’s two main collecting societies and licenses recorded music on behalf of labels and artists to U.K. radio and television broadcasters, as well as its use in bars, nightclubs, shops and offices.
Trending on Billboard
Last year, the 90-year-old organization — which has more than 110 neighboring rights agreements in place with international CMOs, including SoundExchange and the Alliance of Artists and Recording Companies (AARC) in the United States — collected revenues of £285 million ($356 million), its highest ever annual total. In 2023, PPL paid out £247 million ($309 million) to almost 165,000 performers and recording rights holders.
Record industry sources tell Billboard that the suspected embezzlement is believed to have involved an individual or individuals posing as recording artists who were not registered as PPL members and then fraudulently claiming royalties on their behalf.
Billboard understands that PPL discovered the scheme when the real artists tried to register as members earlier this year. Sources say that the fraudulent royalty claims are believed to have taken place over a number of years, possibly as far back as 2016, with the fraudulent transactions believed to total around £500,000 ($625,000).
PPL said it was unable to comment on the case while a criminal investigation is underway and declined to answer questions on when it discovered the suspicious activity, the timeframe of the alleged offense or whether the impacted member accounts relate to U.K. artist members or overseas partner CMOs. The Metropolitan Police has been approached by Billboard for details.
The criminal investigation into suspected embezzlement at PPL comes as the music business battles on multiple fronts against fraudulent activity and rampant copyright infringement on a global scale.
In November, Universal Music Group (UMG), ABKCO and Concord Music Group filed a lawsuit against Believe and its distribution company TuneCore, accusing them of “massive ongoing infringements” of their sound recordings, seeking $500 million in damages (Believe refutes the claims). One month earlier, TikTok cited issues with “fraud” as its reason for walking away from renewing its license with Merlin, a digital licensing coalition representing thousands of indie labels and distributors.
There have also been several high-profile cases against individuals accused of defrauding streaming platforms, rights holders and collection societies in recent years.
In 2022, two men in Phoenix, Arizona pled guilty to claiming $23 million worth of YouTube royalties from unknowing Latin musicians like Julio Iglesias, Anuel AA, and Daddy Yankee despite having no actual ties to those artists.
More recently, a North Carolina musician was indicted by federal prosecutors in September in the first ever federal streaming fraud case. Prosecutors allege Michael Smith used two distributors to upload “hundreds of thousands” of AI-generated tracks, and then used bots to stream them, earning him more than $10 million since 2017.
To try and curb the rise in fraudulent activity the music business has been ramping up its efforts to stop money being illegally siphoned out of the royalty pool.
Last year, a coalition of digital music companies, including distributors including TuneCore, Distrokid and CD Baby, as well as streaming platforms Spotify and Amazon Music, launched the “Music Fights Fraud” task force. The past 12 months have additionally seen Spotify and Deezer change their royalty systems to include financial penalties for music distributors and labels associated with fraudulent activity.
Spotify is firing back at Drake’s accusations that the streamer helped Universal Music Group artificially boost Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us,” calling the allegations “false” and blasting the rapper’s legal action as a “subversion of the normal judicial process.”
The new filing is the first response to a petition filed last month in which Drake accused UMG and Spotify of an illegal “scheme” involving bots, payola and other methods to pump up Lamar’s song — a track that savagely attacked Drake amid an ongoing feud between the two stars.
In a motion filed Friday in Manhattan court, the streaming giant says it has found zero evidence to support the claims of a bot attack, and flatly denies that it struck any deal with UMG to support Lamar’s song.
Trending on Billboard
“The predicate of Petitioner’s entire request for discovery from Spotify is false,” the company’s lawyers write. “Spotify and UMG have never had any such arrangement.”
Beyond denying the allegations, the filing repeatedly criticizes Drake for going to court in the first place — calling his claims of a conspiracy “far-fetched” and “speculative,” and questioning why Spotify (a “stranger” to the “long-running fued” between Drake, Kendrick and UMG) is even involved.
Spotify also criticized Drake for the way in which he brought his claims to court — not as a full-fledged lawsuit, but as an unusual “pre-action” petition aimed at demanding information. The company accused Drake of using that “extraordinary” procedure because his allegations are too flimsy to pass muster in an actual lawsuit and would have been quickly dismissed.
“What petitioner is seeking to do here … is to bypass the normal pleading requirements … and obtain by way of pre-action discovery that which it would only be entitled to seek were it to survive a motion to dismiss,” Spotify’s lawyers write. “This subversion of the normal judicial process should be rejected.”
A spokesperson for Drake and his legal team did not immediately return a request for comment on Spotify’s filings.
Drake went to court last month, accusing UMG of violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, the federal “RICO” statute often used against organized crime. He accused Spotify of participating in the scheme by charging reduced licensing fees in exchange for recommending the song to users. A day later, he filed a similar action in Texas, suggesting that UMG had legally defamed him by releasing a song that “falsely” accused him of being a “sex offender.”
The legal actions represent a remarkable twist in the high-profile beef between the two stars, which saw Drake and Lamar exchange stinging diss tracks over a period of months earlier this year. That a rapper would take such a dispute to court seemed almost unthinkable at the time, and Drake has been ridiculed in some corners of the hip-hop world for doing so.
The actions also represent a stunning rift between Drake and UMG, where the star has spent his entire career — first through signing a deal with Lil Wayne’s Young Money imprint, which was distributed by Republic Records, then by signing directly to Republic.
UMG has not yet filed a responded to the litigation in court. But in a statement issued at the time, the music giant called Drake’s allegations “offensive and untrue”: “No amount of contrived and absurd legal arguments in this pre-action submission can mask the fact that fans choose the music they want to hear.”
In Friday’s filing, Spotify echoed that criticism — arguing that civil RICO cases are difficult to prove even with ample evidence, and that Drake hardly has any: “The Petition asserts no specific facts of any kind in support of these alleged RICO and deceptive practices violations,” the company wrote. “Instead, it relies exclusively on speculation … or the claims of anonymous individuals on the internet.”
Spotify’s attorneys seemed particularly focused on disputing the idea that swarms of bots had been able to flood the platforms to fraudulently boost Lamar’s track — a hot-button issue in the modern music industry. In an affidavit attached to Friday’s filing, Spotify’s vp of music offered sworn testimony that the company “invests heavily” in efforts to “mitigate the impact of artificial streaming on our platform.”
“When we identify attempted stream manipulation, we take action that may include removing streaming numbers, withholding royalties and charging penalty fees,” David Kaefer wrote in the filing. “Confirmed and suspected artificial streams are also removed from our chart calculations. This helps us to protect royalty payouts for honest, hardworking artists.”
Universal Music Group, the owner of Republic Records, has reached a settlement to resolve a trademark lawsuit the music giant filed against a music investment platform called Republic.
The deal will end a case in which UMG accused the smaller company of confusing consumers by expanding into music royalties investing – a move UMG warned could dupe people into thinking Republic Records was involved in the project. But a judge later ruled that the case would be difficult to win.
In an order last week (Dec. 13), the federal judge overseeing the lawsuit said that all claims had been “settled in principle” and ordered the case dismissed. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed, and neither side immediately returned requests for more details.
Trending on Billboard
Launched in 2016, OpenDeal Inc.’s Republic platform lets users buy into startups, cryptocurrency projects and other investments across a wide range of sectors. In October 2021, the company announced it would start allowing users to invest in music royalties by purchasing NFTs (non-fungible tokens), calling itself the first to “bring music investing to the masses.”
That quickly sparked the lawsuit from UMG, which acquired Republic Records in 2000 and now operates it as one of its top imprints, home to Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, Drake, Post Malone and many others. In a November 2021 complaint seeking an immediate injunction, UMG called OpenDeal’s new service a “wanton effort to usurp plaintiff’s Republic name and trademarks for itself.”
“The artists, labels, managers, agents, and fans who currently know of plaintiff’s Republic label would be presented with two different companies offering identical services under identical names in the same industry,” UMG’s lawyers wrote at the time. “Confusion is inevitable.”
But in July 2022, Judge Analisa Torres ruled that that UMG was unlikely to be able to prove such allegations in court. She said the evidence of potential confusion was “extremely minimal,” since the services and consumers of the two companies “differ significantly” — and that a shared connection to the music industry was “not enough.”
“It is conceivable that there may ultimately be some overlap between the parties’ consumers—for instance, fans of a popular artist may both purchase that artist’s music through Republic Records, and make crowdfunded investments in recordings by that artist through the Republic Platform,” the judge wrote. “But, such scenarios remain hypothetical.”
That ruling – denying UMG’s request for a so-called preliminary injunction that would have forced OpenDeal to change its name while the case was litigated – was not a final decision on the case. But it indicated that UMG was unlikely to win, and such trademark cases often settle after such early skirmishes.
After that decision, UMG later filed an updated version of its allegations, and the case proceeded into discovery – the process of exchanging evidence in a civil lawsuit. But the lawsuit has largely been paused for more than a year as the two sides engaged in settlement talks that ultimately resulted in last week’s agreement.
LONDON (AP) — A teen charged with killing three girls and wounding 10 other people in a stabbing rampage at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in England this summer remained silent in court Wednesday as not guilty pleas were entered on his behalf.
Axel Rudakubana, 18, who has refused to speak in each court appearance, was read the charges of three counts of murder, 10 counts of attempted murder and additional charges related to possessing the poison ricin and for having an al-Qaida manual.
Justice Julian Goose ordered a clerk to enter the pleas in Liverpool Crown Court as Rudakubana stayed mum during a video appearance from a London prison where he is held.
Trending on Billboard
His trial is scheduled for Jan. 20.
It was the first time in a court appearance that the teen did not pull his sweatshirt collar over his nose to obscure his face.
He appeared to smile as an officer confirmed that the court proceeding could be heard at the prison. The judge noted that Rudakubana was not responding. He swayed from side to side as the charges were read and bent forward at one point.
Rudakubana was charged in August with murdering three girls — Alice Dasilva Aguiar, 9, Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, and Bebe King, 6 — and stabbing 10 other people on July 29 in the seaside town of Southport in northern England.
The attack at a small dance and yoga studio on the first day of summer vacation sparked rioting across England and Northern Ireland fueled by far-right activists that lasted a week.
The violence, which injured more than 300 police officers and led to fiery attacks on hotels housing migrants, began after Rudakubana — then unnamed –- was falsely identified as an asylum seeker who had recently arrived in Britain by boat.
Rudakubana was born in Wales to Rwandan immigrants.
More than 1,200 people were arrested for the disorder that lasted a week and hundreds have been jailed for up to nine years in prison.
A report released Wednesday was critical of police for failing to recognize the threat of violent disorder after a number of smaller incidents across the U.K. in the previous two years.
The report from the Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services said there were also lapses in gathering intelligence from social media and the dark web.
Rudakubana was charged in October with additional counts for production of a biological toxin, ricin, and possession of information likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing to commit an act of terrorism for having the manual in a document on his computer.
Police have said the stabbings have not been classified as acts of terrorism because the motive is not yet known.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday said it will hear arguments next month over the constitutionality of the federal law that could ban TikTok in the United States if its Chinese parent company doesn’t sell it.
The justices will hear arguments Jan. 10 about whether the law impermissibly restricts speech in violation of the First Amendment.
The law, enacted in April, set a Jan. 19 deadline for TikTok to be sold or else face a ban in the United States. The popular social media platform has more than 170 million users in the U.S.
It’s unclear how quickly a decision might come. But the high court still could act after the arguments to keep the law from taking effect pending a final ruling, if at least five of the nine justices think it’s unconstitutional.
Trending on Billboard
Lawyers for the company and China-based ByteDance had urged the justices to step in before Jan. 19. The high court also will hear arguments from content creators who rely on the platform for income and some TikTok users.
The timing of the arguments means that the outgoing Biden administration’s Justice Department will make the case in defense of the law that passed Congress with bipartisan support and was signed by Democratic President Joe Biden in April.
The incoming Republican administration might not have the same view of the law.
President-elect Donald Trump, who once supported a ban but then pledged during the campaign to “save TikTok,” has said his administration would take a look at the situation. Trump met with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida on Monday.
The companies have said that a shutdown lasting just a month would cause TikTok to lose about one-third of its daily users in the U.S. and significant advertising revenue.
The case pits free speech rights against the government’s stated aims of protecting national security, while raising novel issues about social media platforms.
A panel of federal judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit unanimously upheld the law on Dec. 6, then denied an emergency plea to delay the law’s implementation.
Without court action, the law would take effect Jan. 19 and expose app stores that offer TikTok and internet hosting services that support it to potential fines.
It would be up to the Justice Department to enforce the law, investigating possible violations and seeking sanctions. But lawyers for TikTok and ByteDance have argued that Trump’s Justice Department might pause enforcement or otherwise seek to mitigate the law’s most severe consequences. Trump takes office a day after the law is supposed to go into effect.
This story was originally published by The Associated Press.
Megan Thee Stallion is demanding a restraining order against Tory Lanez, claiming he has continued to “terrorize her” with a “campaign of harassment” even as he sits behind bars on a ten-year prison sentence for shooting her.
In a petition filed Tuesday (Dec. 17) in Los Angeles court, attorneys for the superstar (real name Megan Pete) claim that Lanez (Daystar Peterson) has conspired with people outside prison to “harass, bully, and antagonize” her with misinformation amid his “desperate” appeal of his 2022 felony convictions.
“Mr. Peterson’s attempts to retraumatize and revictimize Ms. Pete recognize no limits — indeed, they continue even while he is behind bars,” Megan’s lawyers write. “While Mr. Peterson distorts and recklessly disregards the truth in his desperate attempt to appeal his conviction, his false assertions have reignited a slew of negative, harmful, and defamatory comments directed to Ms. Pete.”
Trending on Billboard
Monday’s petition cited a separate lawsuit Megan filed in October against YouTuber and social media personality Milagro Gramz, who she claims has served as a “mouthpiece and puppet” for the convicted singer. In an updated version of that case filed last week, Megan alleged that discovery in the case had revealed prison phone calls in which Lanez coordinated payments to Gramz.
“Mr. Peterson’s father—when he thought no one was listening—asked his son about payments to Ms. Cooper for her harassment of Ms. Pete,” Megan’s attorneys write in the new filing. “Instead of denying that Ms. Cooper has been paid, they question how Ms. Pete uncovered their conspiracy.”
If granted by a California judge, the restraining order would immediately bar Lanez from any harassing conduct. In the filing, Megan’s lawyers ask the judge that Lanez be “ordered not to contact Ms. Pete, directly or indirectly, or harass or intimidate her, directly or indirectly, online.”
The exact contours of such an order — what constitutes harassment of Megan versus Lanez simply speaking about his own defense — could be further clarified by the judge. Lanez would later have a chance to respond, and the judge would then decide whether to issue a longer-term restraining order.
Attorneys for Lanez did not immediately return a request for comment.
Lanez was convicted in December 2022 on three felony counts over the violent 2020 incident, in which he shot at the feet of Megan during an argument following a pool party at Kylie Jenner’s house in the Hollywood Hills. In August 2023, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison. He has filed an appeal, which remains pending.
In the new petition, Megan’s attorneys also directly accused Lanez of orchestrating a high-profile false story that circulated on social media earlier this year, claiming incorrectly that an appeals court had declared him “innocent” in the shooting.
“Mr. Peterson, through third parties, disseminated a rumor which falsely suggested that an appellate court declared his innocence,” Megan’s lawyers write. “Mr. Peterson’s interpretation underscores his desire to spread misinformation in an effort to save his public image.”
This is The Legal Beat, a weekly newsletter about music law from Billboard Pro, offering you a one-stop cheat sheet of big new cases, important rulings and all the fun stuff in between.
This week: Daddy Yankee accuses his soon-to-be ex-wife of stealing $80 million from his company; Jay-Z’s attorneys demand dismissal after his accuser admits “mistakes”; Johnny Ramone’s widow wins a legal ruling in the battle over the punk band’s legacy; and more, including a special recap of the best-ever Christmas music lawsuits.
THE BIG STORY: Daddy Yankee’s Divorce Goes Nuclear
Just weeks after Daddy Yankee and wife Mireddys González announced they were divorcing following 20 years of marriage, his lawyers took things to another level.
Trending on Billboard
In a motion filed in Puerto Rico court, the reggaetón hitmaker accused González and others of withdrawing a stunning $80 million from the bank account of his El Cartel Records “without authorization.” He’s seeking an injunction forcing her “immediate removal” from the company and the disclosure of information to unravel whatever harm was allegedly done.
In addition to the accusations of stolen money, the lawsuit makes other notable claims — like alleging that González shut him out of the negotiations that led to October’s $217 million sale of part of his catalog to Concord. He claims he doesn’t actually know exactly what was sold, and that the price “turned out to be unreasonable, disproportionate and far below the real value.”
For more details, go read the full story from Billboard‘s Griselda Flores. And stay tuned at Billboard for more developments as the case moves forward.
CHRISTMAS SPECIAL: Holiday Music Lawsuits
With the holidays right around the corner, I broke down the many times that Christmas music has ended up in court — from Mariah Carey’s ongoing copyright battle over “All I Want For Christmas Is You” to Darlene Love’s fights with advertisers to repeated courtroom clashes over religious freedom. Before you kick off til the new year, go read the full story here.
Other top stories this week…
“I HAVE MADE SOME MISTAKES” – Jay-Z demanded the dismissal of a rape lawsuit linking him to the allegations against Sean “Diddy” Combs, just hours after his accuser gave a bombshell interview to NBC News admitting inconsistencies and “mistakes” in her story. Jay-Z’s attorneys said they would seek to strike the complaint and seek penalties against Tony Buzbee, the attorney who filed it: “It is stunning that a lawyer would not only file such a serious complaint without proper vetting, but would make things worse by further peddling this false story in the press,” said Jay-Z attorney Alex Spiro. “We are asking the Court to dismiss this frivolous case today, and will take up the matter of additional discipline for Mr. Buzbee and all the lawyers that filed the complaint.”
ELSEWHERE IN DIDDY WORLD – On Friday, Combs said he would drop an appeal seeking to be released on bail, meaning he will remain in jail until his May trial on federal sex trafficking and racketeering charges — a move that came after the bond request was rejected by federal judges three separate times. Then on Monday, the judge overseeing the criminal case rejected accusations from Diddy’s legal team that federal prosecutors leaked the infamous video of the Combs assaulting his ex-girlfriend Cassie, ruling there was no proof to such a charge.
HEY HO, LET’S SUE – Johnny Ramone’s widow, Linda Cummings-Ramone, won a legal victory over Joey Ramone‘s brother, Mickey Leigh, in their never-ending feud over control of the pioneering punk band’s legacy. An arbitrator ruled that Leigh’s manager, David Frey, must be terminated as a director on the band’s board for a wide variety of improper conduct, including improperly greenlighting a film project at Netflix with actor Pete Davidson attached to star as Joey. The ruling also detailed how Frey had tanked an opportunity for Linda to throw out the first pitch at a Ramones-themed New York Mets game: “There was no reason to lose this opportunity other than to continue the animosity and dysfunction,” the arbitrator wrote.
QUANDO RONDO SENTENCED – The rapper (Tyquian Terrel Bowman) was sentenced to nearly three years in federal prison after striking a deal with prosecutors to plead guilty to a federal drug offense in Georgia. The deal saw the Savannah-based rapper admit to a single count of conspiracy to distribute marijuana in return for prosecutors dropping more serious charges involving methamphetamine, fentanyl and cocaine.
ASSAULT CASE SETTLED – Paula Abdul and former American Idol producer Nigel Lythgoe agreed to settle a lawsuit in which she alleged that he sexually assaulted her in the early 2000s when she was a judge on the show. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed, and Abdul simply said she was “grateful that this chapter has successfully come to a close and is now something I can now put behind me.”
TIKTOK AT SCOTUS – TikTok asked the U.S. Supreme Court to step in on an emergency basis to block the federal law that would ban the popular platform in the United States unless its China-based parent company agreed to sell it. The appeal to the high court came just days after a federal appeals court affirmed the law’s constitutionality, rejecting TikTok’s claims that it violates the First Amendment’s protections for free speech. With the petition filed, the justices are on the clock: The statute banning TikTok — a crucial music industry promotion tool and a platform that now boasts more than 170 million users in the U.S. — goes into effect on Jan. 19.
Jay-Z’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, expects the rap mogul to be cleared of any wrongdoing in the coming days in the lawsuit filed earlier this month accusing him and Sean “Diddy” Combs of raping a 13-year-old girl at a 2000 MTV Video Music Awards afterparty.
Spiro hosted a press conference at Roc Nation’s headquarters in New York City on Monday afternoon (Dec. 16) where he defended his client’s innocence in the case while laying out a slideshow aiming to poke holes in the apparent inconsistencies of Jane Doe’s filing made by attorney Tony Buzbee.
Spiro chose not to unmask the now 38-year-old woman from Alabama who filed the complaint but chose to sharply criticize her case and her attorney. “This is not for truth and justice,” Spiro said. “This is for money.”
He continued: “When something isn’t real, when something doesn’t happen, you’re going to get the details wrong because you weren’t really there. [It’s] not possible. It’s because this never happened.”
According to her complaint earlier this month, the accuser got a ride from Rochester, N.Y. to New York City as a 13-year-old in 2000 to attend the MTV Video Music Awards at Radio City Music Hall, where she remained outside and later came into contact with Diddy’s limousine driver.
Doe claims she was taken to a “large white residence” about 20 minutes from the award show venue where she was served a drink and then repeatedly sexually assaulted by Diddy and Jay-Z (born Shawn Carter) while another unnamed celebrity watched the rape take place. She says she then escaped the afterparty and made it to a gas station where she allegedly called her father to pick her up.
Jay-Z’s lawyer Alex Spiro hosted a press conference vehemently defending his client against the rape allegations made in the lawsuit. “It’s because this never happened,” he repeated. pic.twitter.com/XHfONUIMcd— LordTreeSa🅿️ (@LordTreeSap) December 17, 2024
But in an interview with NBC News on Friday, the accuser admitted to multiple inconsistencies in her story. And in the same story, her father admitted he can’t recall picking up his daughter following the alleged traumatic events 24 years ago. “I feel like I would remember that, and I don’t,” he said. “I have a lot going on, but I mean, that’s something that would definitely stick in my mind.”
At Monday’s event, Spiro focused on those seeming shortcomings in the story: “[Jane Doe] said she’s at the party alone, this 13-year-old girl, and she finds herself in the room with the three most famous people at the party — just think about how unnatural, how little common sense that makes. And according to her, one of the witnesses is a female celebrity who’s just standing there watching the repetitive rape of a child,” Spiro added. “There’s an adult female in the room watching the rape of a child. Afterward, she says she runs out of the house naked — none of them notice that? None of them pay any notice? For 24 years, none of them has said anything?”
While Jay-Z is named alongside Diddy, who will remain behind bars until his trial in May, Spiro attempted to distance Hov from the embattled Bad Boy CEO.
“Mr. Carter has nothing to do with Mr. Combs’ case or Mr. Combs,” he stated. “They knew each other professionally for a number of years. Just like in all professions, people know each other. At music awards, they support each other. They go to the NBA All-Star Game, they support each other. That’s just how professions work. There is no closer association between any of them — that’s also a matter of fiction.”
According to Spiro, Jay is “upset” about what he views as a baseless lawsuit. “He’s upset that somebody would be allowed to do this, would be allowed to make a mockery of the system like this,” he continued. “He’s upset that this distracts and dissuades real victims from coming forward. He’s upset that his kids and family have to deal with this. And he should be upset.”
In an earlier response statement, Jay-Z denied the allegations against him and called Buzbee a “deplorable human.” At Monday’s event, Spiro hinted at further legal action being taken against Buzbee, who he said “will be dealt with” separately following the lawsuit.
In an exclusive statement to Billboard on Tuesday (Dec. 17), Buzbee claimed that “Mr. Spiro has a history of making threats against opposing lawyers.”
Buzzbee continued: “We won’t be intimidated and will raise his conduct with the relevant entities. As for us, we will continue to conduct ourselves professionally. The only reason this dispute is in the public sphere is that Mr. Spiro filed a frivolous case against my firm and claimed extortion with absolutely no support for such an outlandish claim. We will file the appropriate paperwork in due course.”
Holiday music is a big business. It’s also a big source of litigation.
When Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” stormed back to the top of the Hot 100 this month, it wasn’t alone. Each of the current top five songs are holiday tracks, with Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree” in second and Wham!’s “Last Christmas” coming in fourth.
All those streams make for some serious royalty money. Lee’s perennial classic earned nearly $4 million in 2022, and even lesser songs like “The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don’t Be Late)” typically earn hundreds of thousands per year. In 2018, Billboard estimated that the entire Christmas music genre raked in $177 million in the U.S. market alone – a total that has almost certainly grown in the years since.
And where popularity and money go, lawsuits usually follow. As veteran music industry attorneys are fond of saying: “Where there’s a hit, there’s a writ”
Trending on Billboard
With the holidays right around the corner, Billboard is breaking down the many times that Christmas music has ended up in court – from Mariah’s ongoing copyright battle over “All I Want For Christmas Is You” to Darlene Love’s fights with streamers to repeated courtroom clashes over religious freedom. Here are the five big cases you need to know:
‘All I Want For Christmas Is’ … A Copyright Lawsuit
Carey’s 1994 blockbuster is THE modern holiday song – now re-taking the top spot on the Hot 100 for six straight years and earning a whopping $8.5 million in global revenue in 2022. So it’s no surprise that she’s facing a lawsuit seeking a cut of that cash.
Starting in 2022, Carey has faced copyright infringement allegations from songwriter named Vince Vance, who claims she stole key elements of “All I Want for Christmas is You” from his 1989 song of the same name. He claims that the earlier track, released by his Vince Vance and the Valiants, received “extensive airplay” during the 1993 holiday season — a year before Carey released her now-better-known hit.
“Carey has … palmed off these works with her incredulous origin story, as if those works were her own,” Vance wrote in his latest complaint. “Her hubris knowing no bounds, even her co-credited songwriter doesn’t believe the story she has spun.”
Unsurprisingly Carey’s lawyers see things differently. In a motion filed earlier this year seeking to end the case, her legal team argued that the two songs shared only generic similarities that are firmly in the public domain – including basic Christmas terminology and a simple message that’s been used in “legions of Christmas songs.”
“The claimed similarities are an unprotectable jumble of elements: a title and hook phrase used by many earlier Christmas songs, other commonplace words, phrases, and Christmas tropes like “Santa Claus” and “mistletoe,” and a few unprotectable pitches and chords randomly scattered throughout these completely different songs,” Carey’s attorneys wrote at the time.
With Christmas now looming, it looks like Vance might be getting a lump of coal in his stocking: At a hearing last month, the judge overseeing the lawsuit said she would likely side with Carey and dismiss the case.
Good Grief: ‘Charlie Brown Christmas’ Sues Dollywood
Less than two months before Peanuts television producer Lee Mendelson passed away in 2019, his production company sued Dolly Parton’s Dollywood theme park – accusing the park of using the music from his “A Charlie Brown Christmas” without permission.
The songs of jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi’s legendary soundtrack to the 1965 television special, including classic originals as well as updated standards like “O Tannenbaum,” are firmly in the Christmas canon – and none more so than “Christmas Time Is Here,” which Guaraldi co-wrote with Mendelson.
In a lawsuit lodged in federal court, Lee Mendelson Film Productions Inc. accused Dollywood of using that song for decades in Christmas-themed theatrical production without proper licenses, calling it “willful copyright infringement” and “blatant disregard” of the law.
As is often the case in such lawsuits, Dollywood had secured a blanket license from BMI to publicly play millions of songs for its guests, but would have needed a separately-negotiated “dramatic license” to use it in a stage play: “Defendant knew from the beginning of its infringement that its performance license from BMI does not cover ‘grand’ or ‘dramatic’ rights,” the company wrote.
With a trial set to kick off in December 2021, both sides agreed to a confidential settlement that summer to resolve the case.
Concert Clash: Holiday Cheer or State Religion?
Do Christmas concerts at public schools violate the U.S. Constitution’s separation of church and state? It’s a question that’s been fought in court many times – and when a federal appellate judge weighed it in 2015, she didn’t miss the opportunity to sprinkle holiday references into her opinion.
For decades, Concord High School in Elkhart, Indiana held an annual winter concert centered on an “elaborate, student‐performed nativity scene,” featuring religious songs (including “Jesus, Jesus, Rest Your Head”) along with a narrator reading passages from the New Testament.
Unsurprisingly, after students and parents sued in 2014, a federal district court ruled that such an overtly Christian show violated the First Amendment and its ban on the establishment of a state religion. But when the school later made substantial changes — removing the bible readings and adding songs representing Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, among others — both the district judge and an appeals court said the new version of the show passed constitutional muster.
In her 2018 appellate opinion, Judge Diane Wood waxed poetic – saying that “since ancient times, people have been celebrating the winter solstice” and that the Concord High case put the court “in the uncomfortable role of Grinch.”
“But we accept this position, because we live in a society where all religions are welcome,” Judge Wood wrote. “The Christmas Spectacular program Concord actually presented in 2015 — a program in which cultural, pedagogical, and entertainment value took center stage — did not violate the Establishment Clause.”
Baby Please: Darlene Love Sues Over Her Voice
Before Mariah was the “Queen of Christmas,” that title was sometimes used for Darlene Love – and the original queen hasn’t been afraid to enforce her rights to her iconic holiday tracks “A Marshmallow World” and “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home).”
Back in 2016, attorneys for Love filed a lawsuit against Google over allegations that the tech giant used “Marshmallow” without permission in advertisements for its Nexus smartphones. A few months later, she filed a nearly-identical lawsuit against cable network HGTV, accusing the channel of using “Come Home” in another set of ads.
Darlene Love photographed on November 14, 2020 in Spring Valley, NY.
Mackenzie Stroh
Those might sound like copyright lawsuits, but they weren’t. Instead, Love accused the companies of violating her so-called right of publicity by using her voice in the commercial, claiming that her voice was so well known that using the songs falsely implied she had endorsed those products.
“Defendant’s actions were despicable and in conscious disregard of Love’s rights,” her lawyers wrote at the time. “Defendant turned her into an involuntary pitchman for programs of dubious quality. Defendant created multiple commercials that falsely implied to the public that Love had endorsed HGTV’s programming.”
If successful, the cases could have raised difficult issues for advertisers who want to feature popular songs in their commercials — potentially requiring that they both clear the copyrights to the music and obtain explicit permission from any famous performers. But the litigation never got far: Love dropped her lawsuits later that year.
‘Christmas in Dixie’ Royalties Battle In Australia
When a singer-songwriter named Allan Caswell filed a lawsuit claiming that the country band Alabama had stolen key elements of their 1982 country hit “Christmas in Dixie” from his earlier song “On The Inside,” the case came with a twist: He wasn’t actually suing the band itself.
Instead, he filed his lawsuit against his own music publisher, Sony ATV Music Publishing Australia, for failing to collect royalties from the allegedly copycat song. According to an iteration of the lawsuit filed in 2012, the publisher’s musicologist concluded years earlier that the two tracks “shared a level of similarity” that went beyond a “random occurrence of sheer coincidence.”
But why sue Sony and not Alabama? According to Caswell, it was that the American band was also signed to another unit at Sony – and he claimed that his publisher was refusing to take action as a result.
“That’s the problem,” Caswell told a local TV station in Australia. “I’m signed to Sony ATV. Alabama is signed to Sony Music. So it’s all in-house. There’s no incentive for them to take action. They basically can’t take action because they’d be suing themselves.”
In 2014, an Australian judge dismissed claims by Caswell, ruling there was no evidence that Alabama frontman Teddy Gentry had ever heard “On The Inside” before he wrote his Christmas track. “I am satisfied that it is unlikely that he could have heard the plaintiff’s song by picking it up from the theme music of episodes of Prisoner,” the judge said at the time.
Jailhouse Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree
If you were subjected to “constant” holiday songs for 10 straight hours every single day while serving a prison sentence, you might file a lawsuit too.
That’s what an Arizona inmate named William Lamb did in 2009, accusing Maricopa County Sheriff Joseph Arpaio (yes, that Joe Arpaio) of violating his constitutional rights with a non-stop slate of Christmas tunes at a Tucson correctional facility.
According to Lamb, the prison swapped out regular television programming in favor of “constant Christmas music,” which was played in the facility “continuously and repeatedly” from 9 am to 7 pm. The playlist included secular tracks like Elmo & Patsy‘s “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” and The Chipmunks, but also the Tabernacle Choir singing traditional Christmas carols.
In his lawsuit, Lamb alleged that holiday music marathons “forced him to take part in and observe a religious holiday without being given a choice,” violating the First Amendment. Arpaio argued back that the music served a secular purpose, aimed at “reducing inmate tension and promote safety in the jails” during a “difficult time of year for inmates.”
In a ruling just a week before Christmas in 2009, a federal judge agreed – saying the music served a valid non-religious purpose and didn’t primarily push religion on the inmates.
“Although Plaintiff asserts in his complaint that the purpose of the music was to force him to participate in a religious holiday, he does not explain how playing the music had a primary effect of advancing religion,” the judge wrote in the ruling. “To be sure, some of the music was religious, but the Supreme Court held [in earlier cases] that some advancement of religion does give rise to an Establishment Clause violation. A remote or incidental benefit to religion is not enough.”
Music Business Year In Review