Legal News
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The company that owns the copyrights to Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” is suing a Ford dealership near the rapper’s native Detroit for using the iconic track in TikTok videos that warned viewers they “only get one shot” to buy a special edition truck.
In a lawsuit filed on Monday (Jan. 27) in Michigan federal court, Eight Mile Style accuses LaFontaine Ford St. Clair — which owns several dealerships near Eminem’s hometown — of blasting the song in the social media videos even though “at no time” did it get a license to do so.
“This is an action for willful copyright infringement … against LaFontaine for its unauthorized use of the composition in online advertisements for one or more car dealerships in blatant disregard of the exclusive rights vested in Eight Mile,” the company’s attorneys write.
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The lawsuit says the videos, which allegedly appeared on TikTok, Instagram and Facebook in September and October, used “Lose Yourself” to boost a special Detroit Lions-themed Ford truck, telling viewers: “With only 800 produced, you only get one shot to own a Special Edition Detroit Lions 2024 PowerBoost Hybrid F-150.”
Social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram provide huge libraries of licensed music for users to easily add to their videos. But there’s a key exception: The songs can’t be used for commercial or promotional videos posted by brands. That kind of content requires a separate “synch” license, just like any conventional advertisement on TV.
That crucial distinction has led to numerous lawsuits in recent years. The restaurant chain Chili’s has been sued twice for using copyrighted songs in social videos, including once by the Beastie Boys over “Sabotage” and again by Universal Music Group for allegedly using more than 60 songs from Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber and many others. The hotel chain Marriott and more than a dozen NBA teams have also recently faced copyright lawsuits over the same thing.
In the current case, Eight Mile Style pointedly noted that it had previously approved car commercials involving “Lose Yourself” — something of a natural fit, given the song’s connections to the Motor City.
“The composition was licensed and featured in a two-minute Chrysler television commercial that aired during the 2011 Super Bowl,” Eight Mile’s lawyers write. “Chrysler generated millions of dollars of new and used automobile sales across the world from this use of the composition.”
But LaFontaine’s decision to use the song without approval “usurped Plaintiffs’ exclusive rights to determine when and under what terms the composition may be used for commercial endorsements and advertising,” the company’s lawyers write.
As the legal battle over Kendrick Lamar’s diss track “Not Like Us” gets underway, both sides have retained top attorneys – with Drake hiring a lawyer who battles conspiracy theories and Universal Music Group turning to one of its favorite law firms.
Filed last week, Drake’s case accuses UMG of defaming him by boosting Lamar’s track, which attacks Drake as a “certified pedophile” and has become a chart-topping hit in its own right. The star says his own label “waged a campaign against him,” spreading a “malicious narrative” that it knew was false.
The courtroom showdown has drawn intense publicity, and it’s not hard to see why: It pits one of the world’s biggest stars against the world’s biggest music company after a lucrative, decade-plus partnership, over a smash hit song by a critically-adored rapper – one who’s set to perform at the Super Bowl next month, by the way. It also represents something of an unprecedented move in the history of hip hop: A lawsuit over a rap beef that allegedly went too far.
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To handle that kind of high-profile case, Drake has hired Michael Gottlieb, a former federal prosecutor who once served as a former associate counsel in the Obama White House. Gottlieb is currently a partner at the law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher, a national firm with a well-known music industry practice that has repeatedly been featured on Billboard‘s yearly Top Music Lawyers.
Based on his recent work, Gottlieb is unlikely to be intimidated by the media attention surrounding Drake’s lawsuit. He’s currently representing two Georgia poll workers in efforts to collect a huge verdict against Rudy Guiliani over his lies about election fraud, a case that just settled last week after high-profile court hearings in New York. He’s also repping Blake Lively in her battles against “It Ends With Us” co-star Justin Baldoni, including her harassment case as well as Baldoni’s libel countersuit – cases that have transcended the courtroom and crossed firmly into the messier world of public relations.
In Lively’s suit, she says she was the victim of a sophisticated “digital retaliation campaign” centered “manipulation” of social media designed to destroy her reputation across the internet. Those kinds of claims are nothing new for Gottlieb, who has made a name for himself in recent years filing defamation lawsuits on behalf of alleged victims of online disinformation.
In 2023, he won the $148 million defamation verdict against Giuliani. Before that, he represented the brother of Seth Rich, a Democratic staffer whose murder became grist for right-wing conspiracy theories, as well as the owners of the D.C. pizzeria at the center of Pizzagate — an infamous online hoax centered on false claims of child sex trafficking that later sparked a real-life shooting.
In bringing Drake’s case to court, Gottlieb has raised similar allegations against UMG. He argues that the label used secret payments and bot streams to help spread a “dangerous conspiracy theory” about his client on the internet, putting the rapper at risk of serious physical harm. He even cites the Pizzagate shooting by name, calling a shooting at Drake’s house the “2024 equivalent” of that earlier incident: “UMG’s greed yielded real world consequences.”
Defending against those claims, court records show that UMG has retained the law firm Sidley Austin — one of the largest of the country’s elite “BigLaw” firms, and one that has repeatedly repped the music giant in past legal battles.
Sidley attorneys represented UMG when the label was the named as a defendant in the copyright lawsuit filed by Marvin Gaye’s heirs over Robin Thicke and Pharrell’s chart-topper “Blurred Lines” – a case that transfixed the music industry for years. The firm also handled certain stages of a long-running copyright case filed by UMG’s Capitol Records against the video sharing site Vimeo over internet takedown rules.
More recently, Sidley defended UMG against a class action accusing the label of unfairly refusing to allow hundreds of artists win back control of their copyrights — eventually winning a key ruling that effectively gutted the case. The firm also won a decision last year killing another case filed by the hip hop duo Black Sheep, who accused UMG of securing its stake in Spotify by giving the streamer a “sweetheart” licensing rate that left artists underpaid by millions.
The firm has also handled numerous music matters outside the UMG orbit. Sidley attorneys have also repped Warner Music Group – including in transactional work like the label’s joint venture deal with Elliot Grainge’s label 10K Projects and its $400 million acquisition of 300 Entertainment, as well as defending the company against litigation like a copyright termination case filed by Dwight Yoakam.
As of Monday, the only Sidley attorney to formally appear in Drake’s case is Nicholas P. Crowell, a New York attorney focused on complex commercial litigation, though he’ll almost certainly be joined by other firm attorneys as the case progresses. Top members of the music team at Sidley include litigator Rollin A. Ransom and deals attorney Matthew C. Thompson – both of whom have also repeatedly been named to Billboard’s list of Top Music Lawyers.
If recent work is any indication, the attorneys at Sidley will take an aggressive approach to a lawsuit that UMG itself has already publicly blasted as “illogical” and “frivolous.”
Ransom and other Sidley attorneys are currently defending UMG against Limp Bizkit’s $200 million royalties lawsuit, a case filed in October that claims the band had “not seen a dime in royalties” because of “systemic” and “fraudulent” policies. The lawyers filed a motion to dismiss the case just a month later, ripping the lawsuit’s “entire narrative” as “fiction” and “based on a fallacy.” Last week, a judge sided with those arguments and rejected core aspects of the band’s case.
The firm will file its first response to Drake’s lawsuit in March.
Marilyn Manson will not face criminal charges from Los Angeles prosecutors following a four-year investigation into allegations of domestic violence and sexual assault, the city’s District Attorney said Friday.
Nathan J. Hochman, elected in November, said his office had decided that the statute of limitations had expired for any domestic violence charges against the rocker (Brian Warner), and that they simply could not prove a sexual assault charge in court.
In a brief statement, Hochman said prosecutors “recognize and applaud the courage and resilience of the women who came forward” and thanked them for their “cooperation and patience.”
“While we are unable to bring charges in this matter, we recognize that the strong advocacy of the women involved has helped bring greater awareness to the challenges faced by survivors of domestic abuse and sexual assault,” Hochman said.
In a statement to Billboard, Manson’s attorney Howard King said: “We are very pleased that, after a thorough and incredibly lengthy review of all of the actual evidence, the District Attorney has concluded what we knew and expressed from the start – Brian Warner is innocent.”
Manson has faced a slew of allegations of sexual wrongdoing over the past several years, including from his ex-fiance Evan Rachel Wood, who alleged that the rocker “started grooming me when I was a teenager and horrifically abused me for years.” He also faced claims from former assistant Ashley Walters, model Ashley Morgan Smithline and two Jane Doe accusers.
Manson has denied all of the allegations, and many civil lawsuits filed against him have since been dropped, dismissed or settled. He later sued Wood for defamation over her accusations, but a judge dismissed much of the case in 2023. Manson eventually dropped the case in November and agreed to pay Wood $327,000 in legal fees.
In early 2021, Los Angeles County detectives said they were conducting a criminal investigation and eventually served a search warrant on Manson’s West Hollywood home. The identities of Manson’s accusers in the criminal case have not been disclosed, but Game of Thrones actor Esmé Bianco publicly shared last year that her allegations against him were part of the criminal probe.
In October, then-District Attorney George Gascón said that “new evidence has emerged within the last few weeks” and that his office was pursuing “new leads” that would add to the “already extensive” case file they had amassed. But just weeks later, Hochman was elected.
Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt have joined more than 20 other property owners in suing the City of Los Angeles and the L.A. Department of Water and Power, claiming the city’s decision to “drain” a local reservoir left firefighters without enough water to fight the devastating Palisades Fire that destroyed their home.
In the complaint, which was filed Tuesday (Jan. 21), Pratt, Montag and their co-plaintiffs accuse L.A.’s Department of Water and Power (LADWP) of making “the conscious decision to operate the water supply system with the reservoir drained and unusable as a ‘cost-saving’ measure,” leading hydrants in the Pacific Palisades to “fail…within a span of 12 hours” because the tanks that fed them were not replenished by water from the “empty” Santa Ynez Reservoir.
The lawsuit cites multiple public officials, including Los Angeles County Public Works director Mark Pestrella, for allegedly acknowledging the failures that led to the fire’s uncontrolled spread through a heavily populated area. It claims that “Defendants also designed the water system for public use such that it would not have enough water pressure to fight an urban fire” despite knowing the region was prone to destructive blazes.
“LADWP and City of Los Angeles had a duty to properly construct, inspect, maintain and operate its water supply system,” reads the complaint, filed by attorneys Peter McNulty, Brett Rosenthal and E. Kirk Wood. “The Palisades Fire was an inescapable and unavoidable consequence of the water supply system operated by LADWP and City of Los Angeles as it was planned and constructed. The system necessarily failed, and this failure was a substantial factor in causing Plaintiffs to suffer the losses alleged in this Complaint.”
A key reason for the city and the LADWP’s failure, according to the suit, was its stated decision to leave the reservoir “empty for nearly a year” in order “to seek contractor bids rather than using in-house personnel to repair” it.
“This stated public purpose was far outweighed by the substantial risk posed to Pacific Palisades by wildfires,” the complaint continues. “The degree of damage that resulted from the Palisades Fire far outweighed any benefit that could have been realized by outsourcing and delaying repairs to the Santa Ynez Reservoir.”
Montag, Pratt and their co-plaintiffs are seeking damages including “costs of repair, depreciation, and/or replacement of damaged, destroyed, and/or lost personal and/or real property” and “loss of wages, earning capacity, and/or business profits or proceeds and/or any related business interruption losses and displacement expenses,” among other relief.
The City of Los Angeles and the LADWP did not immediately respond to Billboard‘s requests for comment.
Pratt became a ubiquitous presence on TikTok earlier this month after his and Montag’s home was destroyed in the massive Palisades Fire, with the reality star encouraging fans to stream Montag’s 2010 album Superficial to help them recover from their losses. Thanks to those efforts, Superficial and its songs have appeared on multiple Billboard charts. This week, the album notched a No. 54 debut on the Billboard 200 with more than 15,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. the week ending Jan. 16, according to Luminate, with more than 3.5 million on-demand official streams in the tracking week and 12,000 downloads sold.
Since breaking out on Jan. 7, the ongoing Palisades Fire has burned more than 23,000 acres, destroyed more than 6,000 structures and killed 11 people. It is now 72% contained. A second blaze, the Eaton Fire in Altadena, has burned more than 14,000 acres, destroyed more than 9,000 structures and killed 17. That fire is now at 95% containment.
A teenager who stabbed three young girls to death at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in England was sentenced Thursday to more than 50 years in prison for what a judge called “the most extreme, shocking and exceptionally serious crime.”
Judge Julian Goose said 18-year-old Axel Rudakubana “wanted to try and carry out mass murder of innocent, happy young girls.”
Goose said that he couldn’t impose a sentence of life without parole, because Rudakubana was under 18 when he committed the crime.
But the judge said he must serve 52 years, minus the six months he’s been in custody, before being considered for parole, and “it is likely he will never be released.”
Rudakubana was 17 when he attacked the children in the seaside town of Southport in July, killing Alice Da Silva Aguiar, 9, Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, and Bebe King, 6. He wounded eight other girls, ranging in age from 7 to 13, along with teacher Leanne Lucas and John Hayes, a local businessman who intervened.
The attack shocked the country and set off both street violence and soul-searching. The government has announced a public inquiry into how the system failed to stop the killer, who had been referred to the authorities multiple times over his obsession with violence.
Defendant disrupts the hearing
Rudakubana faced three counts of murder, 10 of attempted murder and additional charges of possessing a knife, the poison ricin and an al-Qaida manual. He unexpectedly changed his plea to guilty on all charges on Monday.
But he wasn’t in court to hear sentence passed on Thursday.
Hours earlier he had been led into the dock at Liverpool Crown Court in northwest England, dressed in a gray prison tracksuit. But as prosecutors began outlining the evidence, Rudakubana interrupted by shouting that he felt ill and wanted to see a paramedic.
Goose ordered the accused to be removed when he continued shouting. A person in the courtroom shouted “Coward!” as Rudakubana was taken out.
The hearing continued without him.
Horror on a summer day
Prosecutor Deanna Heer described how the attack occurred on the first day of summer vacation when 26 little girls were “gathered around the tables making bracelets and singing along to Taylor Swift songs.”
Rudakubana, armed with a large knife, intruded and began stabbing the girls and their teacher.
The court was shown video of the suspect arriving at the Hart Space venue in a taxi and entering the building. Within seconds, screams erupted and children ran outside in panic, some of them wounded. One girl made it to the doorway, but was pulled back inside by the attacker. She was stabbed 32 times but survived.
Gasps and sobs could be heard in court as the videos played.
Heer said two of the dead children “suffered particularly horrific injuries which are difficult to explain as anything other than sadistic in nature.” One of the dead girls had 122 injuries, while another suffered 85 wounds.
A teenager obsessed with violence
The prosecutor said Rudakubana had “a longstanding obsession with violence, killing, genocide.”
“His only purpose was to kill. And he targeted the youngest and most vulnerable in society,” she said, as relatives of the victims watched on in the courtroom.
Heer said that when he was taken to a police station, Rudakubana was heard to say: “It’s a good thing those children are dead, I’m so glad, I’m so happy.”
The killings triggered days of anti-immigrant violence across the country after far-right activists seized on incorrect reports that the attacker was an asylum-seeker who had recently arrived in the U.K. Some suggested the crime was a jihadi attack, and alleged that police and the government were withholding information.
Rudakubana was born in Cardiff, Wales, to Christian parents from Rwanda, and investigators haven’t been able to pin down his motivation. Police found documents about subjects including Nazi Germany, the Rwandan genocide and car bombs on his devices.
In the years before the attack, he had been reported to multiple authorities over his violent interests and actions. All of the agencies failed to spot the danger he posed.
In 2019, he phoned a children’s advice line to ask “What should I do if I want to kill somebody?” He said he had taken a knife to school because he wanted to kill someone who was bullying him. Two months later, he attacked a fellow student with a hockey stick and was convicted of assault.
The definition of terrorism
Prosecutors said Rudakubana was referred three times to the government’s anti-extremism program, Prevent, when he was 13 and 14 — once after researching school shootings in class, then for uploading pictures of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi to Instagram and for researching a London terror attack.
But they concluded his crimes should not be classed as terrorism because Rudakubana had no discernable political or religious cause. Heer said “his purpose was the commission of mass murder, not for a particular end, but as an end in itself.”
Prime Minister Keir Starmer said this week the country must face up to a “new threat” from violent individuals whose mix of motivations test the traditional definition of terrorism.
“After one of the most harrowing moments in our country’s history, we owe it to these innocent young girls and all those affected to deliver the change that they deserve,” Starmer said after the sentencing.
Wrenching testimony from victims
Several relatives and survivors read emotional statements in court, describing how the attack had shattered their lives.
Lucas, 36, who ran the dance class, said that “the trauma of being both a victim and a witness has been horrendous.”
“I cannot give myself compassion or accept praise, as how can I live knowing I survived when children died?” she said.
A 14-year-old survivor, who can’t be named because of a court order, said that while she was physically recovering. “we will all have to live with the mental pain from that day forever.”
“I hope you spend the rest of your life knowing that we think you’re a coward,” she said.
The prosecutor read out a statement from the parents of Alice Da Silva Aguiar, who said their daughter’s killing had “shattered our souls.”
“We used to cook for three. Now we only cook for two. It doesn’t seem right,” they said. “Alice was our purpose for living, so what do we do now?”
This story was originally published by The Associated Press.
Civil rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton has criticized the potential jury pool for rapper A$AP Rocky‘s upcoming gun trial, saying that from what he has been told it lacks diversity. In an Instagram post on Wednesday (Jan. 22) Sharpton wrote, “It has been brought to my attention, by the National Action Network Los Angeles office, that out of one hundred and six (106) people called to potentially sit as jurors in A$AP Rocky’s trial in Los Angeles, there are only 4 black people.”
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Rocky (born Rakim Mayers), 36, is facing 24 years in prison if convicted of all charges in the trial in which he is accused of firing a weapon at former affiliate A$AP Relli (born Terrell Ephron) at a Hollywood hotel in November 2021.
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Rocky has pleaded not guilty to two felony counts of assault with a semiautomatic firearm and earlier this week the Harlem native rejected a plea deal offered by prosecutors that would have had him plead guilty to one felony count of assault with a semiautomatic firearm in exchange for a six-month jail stint along with three years of probation and a seven-year suspended sentence. “I respectfully decline, thank you,” Rocky reportedly told the court in turning down the deal.
At press time spokespeople for Rocky and the Los Angeles Superior Court had not returned Billboard‘s request for comment on Sharpton’s claims.
In his note, Sharpton said that although he is not privy to the particulars of the case, he’s been in close contact with Rocky’s friends. “I do know he deserves to be judged fairly by his peers, as is his Constitutional right,” Sharpton wrote. “It is absolutely ridiculous that the jury will be not fair and representative, so as to deprive A$AP Rocky of a fair trial. When we have four (4) black people in the city of Los Angeles, out of one hundred and six (106) — and exactly zero (0) within in the first thirty (30) possible candidates for the jury — something appears to be very wrong with the system.”
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, L.A. county has a population just north of 9.6 million, which is comprised of 69.6% white citizens and 9% Black residents.
At press time Billboard could not confirm the figures in Sharpton’s post. Sharpton said he will monitor the trial and challenged the L.A. district attorney to “ensure that fair and representative justice is afforded” to the rapper.
The A$AP Mob leader was arrested in April 2022 at LAX and posted a $550,000 bond shortly after; he entered his not guilty plea to all charges in August 2022. Relli testified that the bullets grazed his knuckles as the feud reached a boiling point with his childhood friend. This week, Rocky’s lawyer appeared to preview his strategy for the trial when he revealed a defense argument that his client was holding a prop “stater pistol,” which he said can clearly be seen on security camera footage from that night.
Assuming jury selection wraps up soon, the trial could begin by week’s end.
Sean “Diddy” Combs has sued a man he says defamed him by falsely alleging he possessed videos of the embattled hip-hop mogul committing sexual assault, causing him “profound reputational and economic injury and severe prejudice” ahead of his criminal trial.
In the complaint, filed in New York federal court on Wednesday (Jan. 22), Combs accuses Courtney Burgess, along with Burgess’ attorney Ariel Mitchell, of “pretending they have proof that Mr. Combs engaged in heinous acts, knowing that no such proof exists” — thereby leading “millions of people … to believe in the made-up ‘evidence’ that Defendants have falsely described and vouched for.”
Mitchell notably represents several of Combs’ accusers.
“Defendant Burgess falsely claimed that he possessed videos of Mr. Combs involved in the sexual assault of celebrities and minors,” write Combs’ attorneys Michael Termonte, Erica Wolff and Anna Estevao of the New York firm Sher Tremonte. They add that Mitchell then “repeated those lies” to media outlets while knowing all along that Burgess’ claims “were false, or at a minimum was utterly reckless in disregarding their falsity.” The complaint accuses both Burgess and Mitchell of seeking “to capitalize on the resulting publicity for financial gain” despite knowing that “no such tapes exist.”
Also named as a defendant in the lawsuit is cable network NewsNation, which the lawsuit claims “recklessly repeated and amplifed [Burgess’] lies as if they were true” without ever reaching out to Combs’ representatives for comment or verifying that the alleged videotapes existed in the first place.
To bolster their case, Combs’ attorneys attempt to discredit Burgess by referring to him as “a fringe character” who claims to have worked in the music industry “for decades” even though “there exists no public record of any professional achievements and he left no detectable footprint on the industry prior to his recent campaign to malign Mr. Combs.” They further allege that despite Burgess’ claims that he received the alleged videos from Combs’ late ex-girlfriend Kim Porter, he in fact had “no more than a passing acquaintance” with her.
Combs’ attorneys also claim that Burgess tried to capitalize on the highly publicized allegations swirling around Combs by posting a memoir allegedly written by Porter to Amazon, which they say later pulled the book after it “was denounced by Ms. Porter’s family and others as a fake,” according to the suit.
The lawsuit equally tries to discredit Mitchell — known for filing sexual assault cases against powerful men including Trey Songz, Chris Brown and Combs himself — by claiming her cases against Songz and Brown were disproven and that in “peddling false claims to media outlets” like NewsNation about the alleged videotapes of Combs, she “insisted on valuable benefits and payments in exchange for interviews, including first class air travel, four-star hotel accommodations, hair and makeup allowances, and a ‘materials fee’ for copies of, among other things, demand letters sent on behalf of one of her clients who sued Mr. Combs.”
They add that Mitchell spread her alleged lies about Combs far and wide, including in multiple NewsNation appearances and in a documentary about Combs titled The Making of a Bad Boy that aired on NBC’s Peacock streaming service earlier this month. (NBC is not named as a defendant in the lawsuit.)
“Defendants made these false and defamatory statements in bad faith, as part of a deliberate effort to damage Mr. Combs’s reputation, undermine his businesses and, by painting him as debauched and a pedophile, to poison the public’s perception of him and deprive him of a fair trial,” Combs’ attorneys conclude.
Combs is asking for “not less” than $50 million in damages.
Burgess, Mitchell and NewsNation did not immediately respond to Billboard‘s requests for comment.
Combs is currently imprisoned at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn ahead of his criminal trial, which is set to kick off on May 5. He is charged with running a multi-faceted criminal enterprise in order to satisfy his need for “sexual gratification.” Among other accusations, he is alleged to have held so-called “freak off” parties, during which he and others drugged victims and coerced them into having sex. He faces a potential life prison sentence if convicted on all charges.
The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame wants a federal judge to toss out a copyright lawsuit over an image of Eddie Van Halen, arguing that it made legal fair use of the image by using it as part of a museum exhibit designed to “educate the public about the history of rock and roll music.”
The lawsuit, filed last year, claims the Rock Hall never paid to license Neil Zlozower’s image — a black-and-white photo of late-’70s Van Halen in the recording studio — before blowing it up into an eight-foot-tall display in the Cleveland museum.
But in a motion to dismiss the case filed Tuesday (Jan. 21), the Rock Hall says it didn’t need to. Attorneys for the museum say the offending exhibit was protected by “fair use”, a rule that allows copyrighted works to be reused legally in many contexts, including education and commentary.
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“RRHOF transformed plaintiff’s original band photograph by using it as a historical artifact to underscore the importance of Eddie Van Halen’s musical instruments,” the Hall’s attorneys write. “RRHOF operates a museum, and it displayed the image in service of its charitable mission to educate the public about the history of rock and roll music.”
Zlozower filed his case in October, claiming the Hall made an “exact copy of a critical portion of plaintiff’s original image” for the exhibit, which he claimed “did not include any photo credit or mentions as to the source of the image.”
The Rock Hall is just the latest company to face such a lawsuit from Zlozower, who also snapped images of Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, Michael Jackson and Bruce Springsteen over a decades-long career. Since 2016, court records show he’s filed nearly 60 copyright cases against a range of defendants over images of Elvis Costello, Guns N’ Roses, Mötley Crüe and more.
In the current dispute, the Van Halen image was used in two exhibits: “Play It Loud: Instruments of Rock & Roll” and “Legends.” Focused on musical instruments used by famed rockers, the exhibits featured sections showing Van Halen’s guitars, amplifiers and other gear. In the display, the original photo of the band was cropped to show just Eddie holding one of the guitars, which was placed amid the exhibit’s objects and informational placards.
In their motion to dismiss the case, the Rock Hall’s attorneys say the museum made a “transformative use” of Zlozower’s original image — a key question when courts decide fair use. They say the Hall used it not simply as an image of the band, but “to contextualize Eddie Van Halen’s instruments on display in the museum as historical artifacts.”
“RRHOF incorporated a portion of plaintiff’s photograph displayed next to the exhibition object, as one piece of source material to document and represent the use of the guitar,” the museum’s lawyers write. “This proximal association between source material and exhibition object helps visitors connect information and delve more deeply into the exhibition objects.”
In making that argument, the Hall’s attorneys had a handy piece of legal precedent to cite: A 2021 ruling by a federal appeals court tossed out a copyright lawsuit against New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art over the use of another image of Van Halen in a different exhibit on the same famous set of guitars.
In making that ruling, the appeals court said the Met had clearly made “transformative” fair use of the image by displaying it alongside the exhibit: “Whereas [the photographer]’s stated purpose in creating the photo was to show ‘what Van Halen looks like in performance,’ the Met exhibition highlights the unique design of the Frankenstein guitar and its significance in the development of rock n’ roll instruments,” the appeals court wrote at the time.
That earlier ruling is not technically binding on the case against the Rock Hall, which takes place in another region of the federal court system. But such an uncannily on-point ruling could certainly be influential on the judge overseeing the current case.
An attorney for Zlozower did not immediately return a request for comment.
Limp Bizkit has suffered a setback in its $200 million lawsuit against Universal Music Group, with a federal judge ruling that the band cannot legally void its contracts of “nearly 30 years” over accusations of underpaid royalties.
The blockbuster case, filed last year in Los Angeles federal court, claims that frontman Fred Durst and the band have “not seen a dime in royalties” over the years. Among other claims, the lawsuit argued that the band is therefore entitled to a ruling of “rescission” that terminates its deals with UMG.
But in a decision Friday (Jan. 17), Judge Percy Anderson ruled that the band had in fact been “paid millions in advances” and that UMG had fronted “substantial sums” to record and distribute Limp Bizkit’s albums – meaning the band doesn’t deserve the drastic remedy of terminating the decades-old deals.
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“Plaintiffs seek rescission of contracts that have governed the parties’ relationship beginning in 1996 – nearly 30 years – because the agreements should be rescinded as fraudulently induced,” the judge wrote. “Plaintiffs have not plausibly alleged the type of ‘substantial’ or ‘total failure’ in the performance of the contracts that could support rescission of the parties’ agreements.”
The ruling isn’t a total defeat. Judge Anderson didn’t reach many of the lawsuit’s other legal claims, including fraudulent concealment and intentional misrepresentation, and gave Limp Bizkit’s lawyers a chance to fix the rescission claim. But the judge’s wording suggested he will be skeptical of revoking a contract when “millions in royalties were advanced and paid under decades-old agreements.”
If finalized, the decision is something of a double blow for Durst’s lawsuit. It would not only reject his efforts to rescind the contracts, but would sink one of his other core allegations: that UMG has infringed Limp Bizkit’s copyrights. Such a claim — which could carry a huge damages award — can only succeed if the band’s contracts are voided and it legally regains its ownership of the copyrights, the judge wrote.
That could also mean the case is headed to another court entirely. If Limp Bizkit’s lawsuit no longer contains federal copyright claims, a federal court would no longer have jurisdiction over the case, meaning the lawsuit’s remaining accusations against UMG would need to be refiled in a state court.
In a statement to Billboard on Wednesday, attorneys for Durst and Limp Bizkit downplayed the impact of the ruling, noting that the court had “upheld a majority of our claims” and given them a second shot at the rejected claims.
“The facts speak for themselves,” said Frank Seddigh, the band’s lead attorney. “Universal will be held accountable for its actions and will not get away with its conduct at the expense of artists.”
A spokesman for UMG declined to comment.
Durst and Limp Bizkit sued in October, claiming the band had “never received any royalties from UMG,” despite its huge success over the years: “The band had still not been paid a single cent by UMG in any royalties until taking action.”
That claim was something of a stunner. How had one of the biggest bands of its era, which sold millions of records during the music industry’s MTV-fueled, turn-of-the-century glory days, still never have been paid any royalties nearly three decades later?
According to Durst, the answer was an “appalling and unsettling” scheme to conceal royalties from artists and “keep those profits for itself.” He claimed UMG had essentially kept Limp Bizkit in the red with shady bookkeeping, allowing the label to falsely claim the band remained unrecouped — meaning its royalties still had not surpassed the amount paid in upfront advances.
UMG hit back a month later, calling the allegations “fiction” and demanding they be thrown out of court. The music giant’s attorneys argued that Limp Bizkit’s own legal filings contradicted the accusation that the band had not been paid: “Plaintiffs concede thereafter receiving millions of dollars in payments.”
Following Friday’s decision, Limp Bizkit has until early next month to refile an amended version of the lawsuit.
Chris Brown has filed a lawsuit against Warner Bros. Discovery, alleging the media giant defamed him with a 2024 documentary claiming that the R&B star had a long history of sexually abusing women.
Filed Tuesday (Jan. 21) in Los Angeles Superior Court, the complaint accuses Warner Bros. Discovery and Ample Entertainment, the production company behind Chris Brown: A History of Violence, of “promoting and publishing false information in their pursuit of likes, clicks, downloads and dollars and to the detriment” of the R&B star — all while “knowing that it was full of lies and deception and violating basic journalistic principles.”
“They did so after being provided proof that their information was false, and their storytelling ‘Jane Doe’ had not only been discredited over and over but was in fact a perpetrator of intimate partners violence and aggressor herself,” reads the lawsuit, which was filed by attorneys Arnold Shokouchi and Levi McCathern. “Mr. Brown has never been found guilty of any sex related crime…but this documentary states in every available fashion that he is a serial rapist and sexual abuser.”
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The Jane Doe who made sexual assault accusations against Brown in the documentary — whom he identifies in the lawsuit — is also named as a defendant in the complaint, which alleges the woman “completely disregarded the facts in an attempt for fame and fortune — all at the cost of Chris Brown and the reputation he has worked diligently in redeeming over the last decade.”
The “sensationalized, unfounded, and defamatory allegations” in the documentary “have been discredited, dismissed by the courts, or outright fabricated,” Brown’s lawyers write. The lawsuit further alleges that the Jane Doe filed a “frivolous civil lawsuit” against Brown in January 2022 in which she accused him of sexual assault and battery — but that her claims “were determined to be entirely fabricated, leading to the withdrawal of her attorneys and dismissal of the case” that same August “after a Miami Beach Police detective uncovered text messages…that exposed her dishonesty.” It adds that while an investigative report published by Rolling Stone in March 2022 “further discredited her claims,” the ID documentary nonetheless portrayed her “as credible, ignoring her established lack of veracity.”
Later in the complaint, Brown’s attorneys break down the Jane Doe’s alleged “history of violence and erratic behavior [that] should have raised red flags for any responsible journalist.” The suit includes a copy of an alleged restraining order filed against Doe by an ex-boyfriend in 2021 “after she physically assaulted him, threatened him with a knife, and engaged in online harassment.”
“These incidents, detailed in court records and leading to her arrest by the Los Angeles Police Department, were disregarded by the Defendants, who instead framed her as a reliable source to bolster their sensationalized portrayal instead of the physical aggressor in a romantic relationship,” the complaint reads.
Key to the lawsuit is the accusation that the companies behind the documentary moved forward with its release even though they allegedly knew it “contained false claims and violated journalist professional standards” — claims Brown’s lawyers now say “caused significant harm to Mr. Brown’s reputation, career, and business opportunities.”
Several individuals who appeared as talking heads in the documentary are also named as defendants in the lawsuit.
Brown is asking for $500 million in damages, “a portion of which will be donated to survivors of sexual abuse.”
Warner Bros. Discovery and Ample Entertainment did not immediately respond to Billboard‘s requests for comment.