Legal News
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Broadcast radio’s trade group is doubling down on its effort to combine federal rate court proceedings that will determine how most of the country’s songwriters get paid for airplay.
After a judge on May 26 denied the Radio Music Licensing Committee’s petition to combine rate court proceedings with leading performance rights organizations BMI and ASCAP under a single judge last week, according to a statement from BMI, the RMLC filed an appeal on Wednesday (May 31) at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
According to BMI’s interpretation of Southern District of New York Judge Louis Stanton‘s ruling denying the petition, neither the BMI Consent Decree nor the Music Modernization Act of 2018 justified the RMLC’s joint rate petition. Judge Stanton ordered the RMLC’s rate petition against ASCAP to be assigned to another judge and tried separately.
Just Stanton’s ruling instructs the court clerk to “sever all portions of the RMLC petition which seek the setting by a rate court of an ASCAP reasonable license fee under the ASCAP consent decree and assign them by the standard electronic method of selection of a judge of this court.”
The RMLC’s petition to combine the ASCAP and BMI under one judge who would simultaneously set rates for both performance rights organizations in once proceeding was based on what publishing sources have told Billboard is a wrong interpretation of the Music Modernization Act, which included a provision to moving rate hearings to a rotating roster of Southern District judges.
Having a single judge, instead of bifurcated rate court proceedings, could benefit the RMLC because it would likely pit BMI and ASCAP against each other, vying for a higher rate than the other and arguing over market share. In the past, Judge Stanton has overseen BMI rate trials and Judge Denise Cote has overseen ASCAP rate trials. Music publishing executives say that the MMA intended to keep the two-pronged approach for the PRO rate setting, but with rotating judges, not just the two who have overseen the proceedings up to now.
“We are extremely pleased that the RMLC’s latest attempt to deny fair compensation to songwriters was dismissed, and that its end run around the clear language of the BMI consent decree and the MMA was properly rejected by the Court,” BMI president and CEO Mike O’Neill said in a statement. “This would have cleared the way for BMI to secure the appropriate value of our affiliates’ music without the distractions the RMLC was trying to create. Unfortunately, the RMLC is once again opting for litigation over negotiation, and we will continue to do what is needed to protect the essential contributions our affiliates make to the radio industry.”
“It is unfortunate that the RMLC refuses to negotiate to pay songwriters fairly,” added ASCAP CEO Elizabeth Matthews in her own statement. “ASCAP is focused on obtaining fair market rates from radio for our more than 900,000 songwriter, composer and music publisher members. ASCAP will vigorously defend the value of our members’ music and fight the RMLC’s harmful attempt to weaponize its cartel market power to pay songwriters less.”
The RLMC did not respond to a request for comment at time of publishing.
A South Korean law firm representing three members of K-pop boy band EXO says the singers are pursuing legal action against their longtime label and management agency SM Entertainment over contractual issues related to “slave contracts.”
In a press release, Lin Law Firm claims it has represented K-pop stars Baekhyun, Chen and Xiumin — who are members of EXO and also perform together in a splinter trio unit named EXO-CBX — since March over pay and contract disputes with SM Entertainment, who debuted EXO in 2012 and are home to acts like TVXQ!, Girls’ Generation, SHINee, NCT and aespa.
Baekhyun, Chen and Xiumin (whose full names are Byun Baekhyun, Kim Jongdae and Kim Minseok, respectively) claim SM has shown a lack of payment transparency and required unreasonably long contracts extending beyond 12 years, according to a five-page document reviewed by Billboard that was sent by Lin Law Firm attorney Lee Jaehak.
The firm alleges that despite the trio signing exclusive, long-term contracts with SM, the K-pop company has not provided full data about the artists’ payments as they recently requested. Lin Law adds that the artists have always trusted SM’s payments despite Korean law requiring entertainment companies to provide updates on payment settlements twice a year.
Lin Law Firm also claims that SM has used its position in the K-pop market to force artists to sign with the company for longer than the industry standard seven years — deals it calls “slave contracts.” The firm says that SM automatically extends artist contracts by three years if the artist works overseas, which applies to Chen and Xiumin, as the two were originally part of the China-focused group EXO-M. Meanwhile, Baekhyun has released solo music in Japan and was a part of the U.S.-focused, Billboard 200-topping “supergroup” SuperM.
The final point in Lin Law’s document includes an apologetic message to fans and a pledge to resolve the dispute.
SM Entertainment has not responded to Billboard‘s request for comment. Baekhyun, Chen and Xiumin have not publicly commented on the matter, either.
Alleged “slave contracts” are a historically sensitive spot for SM Entertainment. In 2009, three of the original five members of boy band TVXQ! asked Korean courts to examine their 13-year contracts, citing extreme length and worries about payment distribution. Over the course of three-plus years of legal battles, singers Kim Jaejoong, Park Yoochun and Kim Junsu won the right to work independent of their SM deals and formed a new boy band named JYJ. By November 2012, the two parties mutually agreed to terminate the SM contracts, which would have expired in 2016 at the earliest.
As a result, South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission created a rule in 2010 that did away with so-called “slave contracts,” requiring entertainment companies to sign individuals for a maximum of seven years initially. Lin Law does not explain how SM could legally surpass the rule.
As members of EXO, Baekhyun, Chen and Xiumin helped lead K-pop’s international expansion with the group’s dual focus on releasing music in both Korean and Chinese. In April 2015, EXO set a new record for the largest sales week for K-pop artists in America at the time when its Exodus album sold 6,000 copies, according to Luminate. It held that record until late 2016.
EXO has scored five No. 1s on Billboard‘s World Albums chart, while EXO-CBX also topped the chart with its debut record Hey Mama! from 2016. All three members have also released solo albums, with Chen releasing a new song, “Bloom,” on May 30 through SM Entertainment. After several EXO members fulfilled their South Korean military duties, the group reunited for the first time in years. SM has confirmed the group would release a new studio album together this year.
Sean “Diddy” Combs is suing alcohol giant Diageo for allegedly breaching their partnership deal for a brand of tequila, leveling accusations of racism at the company and claiming it has treated his product line “worse than others because he is Black.”
In a complaint filed Wednesday (May 31) in New York court, attorneys for the star’s Combs Wines and Spirits claimed that Diageo had “typecast” his DeLeon Tequila as a “Black brand” that could only be sold to “urban” consumers, harming its sales and potential for growth.
“Cloaking itself in the language of diversity and equality is good for Diageo’s business, but it is a lie,” Combs’ lawyers wrote. “While Diageo may conspicuously include images of its Black partners in advertising materials and press releases, its words only provide the illusion of inclusion.”
Combs claims the “unequal treatment” DeLeon has received from Diageo has left his brand lagging behind competing Diageo brands like Casamigos and Don Julio — and that the company then used those lower sales figures to offer even less support for the brand.
“Combs Wines seeks to finally put an end to Diageo’s longstanding misconduct,” the star’s lawyers wrote. “Diageo must be ordered by a court to give Combs Wines the same treatment it gives its other, successful tequila brands. It is time that Diageo’s actions match its words.”
In a statement to Billboard, a Diageo spokesperson said the company was “disappointed our efforts to resolve this business dispute amicably have been ignored, and that Mr. Combs has chosen to damage a productive and valued partnership.”
“This is a business dispute, and we are saddened that Mr. Combs has chosen to recast this matter as anything other than that,” the company said. “Our steadfast commitment to diversity within our company and the communities we serve is something we take very seriously. We categorically deny the allegations that have been made and will vigorously defend ourselves in the appropriate forum.“
In technical legal terms, the lawsuit claims that Diageo has violated a specific provision of the operating agreement that governs the Combs-Diageo joint venture that owns DeLeon. It’s not entirely clear what that provision requires — much of the legal complaint is heavily redacted — but the lawsuit claims it was included in the deal to ensure equal treatment.
“Because he knows that contracts matter more than press releases, Mr. Combs insisted that Diageo agree to certain terms to ensure his brands were not ignored or relegated to second-class status,” Combs’ lawyers wrote.
Among other alleged breaches, Combs claims Diageo violated that provision by placing DeLeon in “far fewer outlets than its other tequila brands” and failing to produce enough of it to keep store shelves stocked.
But Combs’ lawyers repeatedly stressed that their case was not simply a run-of-the-mill breach of contract lawsuit: “Similar to the realities experienced by many people of color in the United States, Diageo’s treatment of its business relationship with Mr. Combs was tainted by racial prejudices.”
At one point, Combs claims he was directly told that “things would be different if he were a white, not Black, celebrity.”
“Diageo, in other words, openly admitted that it viewed Mr. Combs merely as a Black man thatmight prove useful in marketing to Black consumers,” Combs said. “Nothing more.”
Read the entire complaint against Diageo here:
After a whirlwind week of litigation, Adidas has abruptly dropped a federal court case aimed at freezing $75 million held by Kanye West’s Yeezy brand, saying it will instead pursue the money solely through private arbitration.
In a legal filing Tuesday evening, attorneys for Adidas and Yeezy said they had reached an agreement that would see the sneaker giant voluntarily dismiss the case. It came just hours after a federal judge refused to grant Adidas an emergency order re-freezing the $75 million held by Yeezy.
But the dismissal is hardly the end of the dispute. Adidas and Yeezy will continue battle it out in a private arbitration case, in which Adidas will likely argue that that West’s “offensive conduct” caused the breakdown of their long-standing partnership.
Adidas, which operated a lucrative sneaker collaboration with West for nearly a decade, was one of many companies to terminate its relationship with the embattled rapper (sometimes known as Ye) last fall in the wake of his antisemitic statements and other erratic behavior.
It’s been a messy breakup for Adidas. The split contributed to a loss of $655 million in sales for the last three months of 2022, helping drive the company to a quarterly net loss of $540 million. Last month, CEO Bjorn Gulden said the company would begin selling its $1.3 billion worth of unsold Yeezys, but would “donate money to the organizations that help us and were harmed by what Ye said.”
Days after Adidas announced the split with West, newly-unsealed court records show that it demanded Yeezy return $75 million that had allegedly been deposited in its accounts. When Yeezy refused, Adidas secretly filed its case in federal court, seeking a so-called “attachment” order immediately freezing those funds. While the real issues will be decided via arbitration, Adidas wanted the court to use its power to ensure that the money did not disappear while those private proceedings play out.
Court records show that Judge Valerie E. Caproni quickly granted the asset freeze in November, doing so not only in secret, but also on an “ex parte” basis — meaning without giving West or Yeezy a chance to make counter-arguments. Adidas argued, and the judge agreed, that there was a serious risk that Yeezy would have moved the money if given advanced notice.
But last week, after Yeezy’s attorneys challenged the freeze order, the judge finally lifted it — ruling that Adidas had run afoul of procedural requirements for such asset attachments and had thus “deprived” Yeezy of a fair chance to fight back.
In the wake of that order, lawyers for Adidas scrambled to have it reimposed. They argued that Yeezy currently holds $75 million “to which it has no legal right,” and warned that a court order was needed to maintain the status quo.
“Yeezy is likely to comingle the funds with an unknown balance of funds in its possession at other financial institutions, such that it would be more difficult if not impracticable to audit those accounts and determine which monies are owned by Adidas,” lawyers for Adidas wrote. “In addition, Ye faces a clear risk of insolvency, giving rise to a risk of irreparable harm.”
But this time, Judge Caproni was unswayed. While she said that Adidas would likely win its arbitration case against Yeezy, the judge ruled that the sneaker company had not met the difficult legal requirements for a new temporary restraining order: “Adidas’s motion for a TRO is denied.”
While the ruling only denied the emergency motion, Adidas could have still won a more conventional order in the coming days reimposing an asset freeze on Yeezy. But hours after Judge Caproni’s ruling, Adidas moved to drop its federal case.
Looking ahead, it’s unclear how long the pending arbitration case will take to play out, or what exact issues are being disputed. But in court documents, Adidas has said that West’s “racist, antisemitic, and other offensive public statements and conduct” caused “considerable damage to its brand.”
“Adidas has multiple causes of action against Yeezy, resulting from Ye’s highly public and offensive conduct described above, which violated the terms of the Agreement and justified adidas’s termination of that contract,” the company wrote. Those broader causes of action, as well as the dispute over [issues], will be resolved through arbitration.”
Reps for both sides did not immediately return a request for comment.
A Manhattan federal judge has denied a request by Adidas for an emergency order re-freezing $75 million held by Kanye West’s Yeezy brand, rejecting the sneaker company’s concerns that the disputed money might disappear.
Days after Judge Valerie E. Caproni lifted a months-long freeze on Yeezy’s accounts, she refused on Tuesday (May 30) to impose a temporary restraining order that would have immediately locked up the money again. Adidas argued that it faced “irreparable harm” without such an order as Yeezy was nearing insolvency, but the judge was unswayed.
“It is hereby ordered that … Adidas’s motion for a TRO is denied,” Judge Caproni wrote in her order, which was obtained by Billboard.
While still a loss for Adidas, Tuesday’s ruling only denied the emergency motion; Adidas can still win a more conventional order in the coming days reimposing an asset freeze on Yeezy. Both sides are due to file briefs on that request by Thursday.
Neither side immediately returned requests for comment.
Adidas, which operated a lucrative sneaker partnership with West for nearly a decade, was one of many companies to terminate its relationship with the embattled rapper (sometimes known as Ye) last fall in the wake of his antisemitic statements and other erratic behavior.
Shortly after the split, Adidas secretly filed a case in federal court to freeze $75 million in Yeezy assets. Adidas believes West’s company is contractually required to return the funds and has filed a private arbitration case to recover them. The company sought the court order to ensure that the money was not moved while those proceedings play out.
Newly-unsealed court records show that Judge Caproni quickly granted the asset freeze in November. But last week, after Yeezy’s attorneys challenged the order, she lifted it — ruling that Adidas had run afoul of procedural requirements and “deprived” Yeezy of a fair chance to fight back.
Just hours after that decision was issued, lawyers for Adidas filed their emergency request to re-freeze the assets. They argued that Yeezy currently holds $75 million “to which it has no legal right,” and warned that a court order was needed to maintain the status quo.
“Yeezy is likely to comingle the funds with an unknown balance of funds in its possession at other financial institutions, such that it would be more difficult if not impracticable to audit those accounts and determine which monies are owned by Adidas,” lawyers for Adidas wrote. “In addition, Ye faces a clear risk of insolvency, giving rise to a risk of irreparable harm.”
Tuesday’s ruling rejecting that motion came after a live hearing in Judge Caproni’s courtroom. According to a report by Bloomberg, the judge said during the hearing that while Adidas would likely win its arbitration case against Yeezy, it had not met the difficult legal requirements for a temporary restraining order. Among other things, the judge reportedly said that Adidas had offered only “tabloid speculation” about Yeezy’s risk of insolvency.
The newly-revealed litigation with Yeezy is just one piece of a messy breakup for Adidas. The split contributed to a loss of $655 million in sales for the last three months of 2022, helping drive the company to a quarterly net loss of 513 million euros ($540 million). Last month, CEO Bjorn Gulden said the company would begin selling $1.3 billion worth of unsold Yeezys, but would “donate money to the organizations that help us and were harmed by what Ye said.”
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: A messy legal battle between Adidas and Kanye West spills into the open; a YouTuber who defamed Cardi B declares bankruptcy to avoid a $4 million judgment; prosecutors call for a harsh sentence against Tory Lanez over the Megan Thee Stallion shooting; and much more.
THE BIG STORY: Adidas v. Kanye
Thanks to newly-unsealed court records, the messy legal fallout from Kanye West’s high-profile split with Adidas is now coming into view.
Federal court records obtained by Billboard last week show that Adidas launched private arbitration proceedings last fall, shortly after the company terminated its long-standing partnership with West and his Yeezy brand in the wake of the rapper’s antisemitic statements. As part of that case, the company secretly sought – and won – an “attachment” order from a federal judge, freezing $75 million in Adidas money that’s allegedly sitting in Yeezy bank accounts.
Secretly? Yes, this case is a treasure trove for legal procedure nerds. The case was not only filed under seal and kept that way for months, but also on a so-called ex parte basis — meaning the judge issued the freeze without giving West or Yeezy a chance to make counter-arguments, saying there was a risk the rapper would have moved the money if given advanced notice.
But now, the case is spilling into the open. In a ruling earlier this month that unsealed the record, the judge cited the fact that Kanye himself had once mentioned the litigation on social media. And in a ruling Friday, that same judge overturned the ex parte freeze entirely, saying Adidas had failed to meet procedural requirements and had “deprived” Yeezy of a fair chance to fight back.
In the wake of that order, lawyers for Adidas are currently scrambling, seeking to have a new freeze imposed on the company. We’ll update you when we know more, so stay tuned.
Other top stories…
MORE KANYE PROBLEMS – Adidas isn’t the only former business partner in litigation with West. The Gap filed a case earlier in the week, alleging the rapper made unapproved changes to a Los Angeles retail location that resulted in an expensive lawsuit from the building’s owner.
B*TCH BETTER HAVE MY MONEY? – Eighteen months after Cardi B won a $4 million defamation verdict over salacious claims made by a YouTube host named Tasha K, the gossip blogger filed for bankruptcy, saying she has less than $60,000 in total assets to pay out.
FETTY WAP GETS SIX YEARS – The “Trap Queen” star was ordered to spend six years in federal prison, after pleading guilty last year to federal drug charges. His attorneys had asked for only a five-year sentence; prosecutors wanted as many as nine, citing music that they said had helped “glamorize the drug trade.”
GENIUS v. GOOGLE AT SCOTUS – The Department of Justice urged 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.
TORY LANEZ SENTENCE LOOMS – Los Angeles prosecutors asked a judge to impose a harsh sentence against rapper Tory Lanez after he was convicted last year of shooting Megan Thee Stallion, arguing he behaved with “indifference for human life” at a moment when Megan was “particularly vulnerable.”
GOOGLE FACES $32M PATENT VERDICT – A federal jury ordered the tech giant to pay Sonos the huge sum for infringing one of its smart speaker patents, awarding the smaller company $2.30 for each of the more than 14 million Google devices that were sold incorporating the patented technology.
MIGOS ALLEGED KILLER INDICTED – A Texas grand jury formally issued a murder indictment against Patrick Xavier Clark, the man who was arrested and charged last year in the slaying of Migos rapper TakeOff.
Bitch better have my money?
Spoiler alert: She doesn’t.
Eighteen months after Cardi B won a $4 million defamation verdict over salacious claims made by a YouTube host named Tasha K, the gossip blogger has filed for bankruptcy – and she says she has less than $60,000 in total assets to pay out.
In a petition filed Thursday in Florida federal court, Tasha K (real name Latasha Kebe) filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, claiming she is unable to pay more than $3.4 million in liabilities that she owes to a number of creditors.
At the top of that list? Belcalis Marlenis Almanzar (Cardi’s legal name), to whom Tasha says she owes $3,380,642 for a “judgment.” That’s because Cardi won a verdict in January 2022 that Tasha had legally defamed the superstar by making false claims about drug use, STDs and prostitution in her YouTube videos.
Shortly after Cardi B won that verdict, she tweeted “imma come for everything” along with the acronym BBHMM – “bitch better have my money.” But Thursday’s petition makes clear that the star is unlikely to see much of that money any time soon.
Tasha lists just $58,595 in total assets to her name, and the vast majority of that comes from a 2021 Chevrolet Silverado that’s tied as collateral to an unpaid auto loan. She listed only $11,750 in other property, including two Louis Vuitton purses, and just $95 in actual cash in her bank account. She counts the trademark to her “UnWineWithTashaK” YouTube channel as an asset, but says the value of the brand is “unknown.”
Attorneys for Cardi B, who have been legally pursuing the money for months, did not immediately return a request for comment.
Cardi sued Tasha in 2019, over what the rapper’s lawyers called a “malicious campaign” on social media and YouTube aimed at hurting Cardi’s reputation. The star’s attorneys said they had repeatedly tried – and failed – to get her to pull her videos down.
One Tasha video cited in the lawsuit includes a statement that Cardi had done sex acts “with beer bottles on f—ing stripper stages.” Others videos said the superstar had contracted herpes; that she had been a prostitute; that she had cheated on her husband; and that she had done hard drugs.
Following a trial in January, jurors sided decisively with Cardi B, holding Tasha liable for defamation, invasion of privacy, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. They ordered her and her company to pay than $2.5 million in damages and another $1.3 million in legal fees incurred by Cardi. Tasha appealed the verdict last summer, but a federal appeals court easily rejected that request in March.
Tasha has vowed to keep fighting the case “all the way to the Supreme Court if need be,” even if it “takes years” to do so. But Thursday’s bankruptcy will impose an automatic pause on all litigation while the insolvency proceedings are carried out. And given her lack of resources, it seems unlikely that she will be able to afford the expense of continuing to seek to overturn the verdict.
Tasha’s company, Kebe Studios LLC, is solely on the hook for $500,000 of the judgment. It does not appear that the company itself has yet filed for bankruptcy, or if such proceedings will be handled as part of Tasha’s case.
Beyond her assets and liabilities, Thursdays’ bankruptcy filing includes other interesting information about Cardi’s nemesis. The blogger says that $10,000 in her “Google account” – a reference to YouTube’s parent company – was already garnished last year by the superstar’s attorneys. She also says that she and her husband earned a combined income from their work (both are listed as “content creators”) of $156,021 in 2021 and $134,861 in 2022, and that they make more than $30,000 per month currently.
An attorney for Tasha did not immediately return a request for comment.
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.
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.
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.”