Legal
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A Louisiana federal judge has finalized an unusual legal decision that says American copyright termination rules apply not just stateside but also across the globe, unswayed by warnings that it will cause “destabilization of long-settled business practices” in the music industry.
Ruling on a dispute over the 1963 rock classic “Double Shot (Of My Baby’s Love),” Judge Shelly Dick said Thursday that songwriter Cyril Vetter could win back full copyright ownership to the track from publisher Resnik Music Group via termination — an important federal provision that allows artists to take back their rights decades after they sold them away.
What makes the ruling notable is that Judge Dick said Vetter could recapture rights to the song “throughout the world,” not just in the U.S. That’s a big departure from the status quo under longstanding legal precedents, which say that reversions apply only to the American market and have no effect on rights in foreign countries.
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Resnik has warned that such a decision will be deeply disruptive to the music industry. In court filings, the company has argued it will “upend” existing practices and could even violate international treaty obligations: “The result would be chaos … rather than the orderly system that the nations of the world have in fact developed over more than a century.”
Music attorneys have also taken notice. Tal Dickstein, a prominent litigator at the law firm Loeb & Loeb, wrote in August that Judge Dick was “breaking with existing precedent” by extending the power of termination overseas. Eric J. Schwartz, an attorney at the firm Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp, said the ruling would be a “major upheaval” if upheld (though he said that “seems unlikely”). Bill Hochberg, another longtime music attorney, went much further, saying the “Double Shot” case could “radically revolutionize the way the music business runs” and might be “financially devastating” for large entertainment companies.
The ruling for Vetter — largely explained in an earlier decision last summer and finalized in Thursday’s judgment — is likely to be challenged at a federal appeals court; defense attorneys already attempted to file an appeal at an earlier stage in the case. An attorney for Resnik did not immediately return a request for comment on the ruling on Friday (Jan. 31).
If it were to be adopted in courts across the country, Judge Dick’s approach would be a boon for songwriters and their heirs. Under existing precedent and practices, publishers often continue to own foreign rights even after a U.S. termination, giving them potential veto power over cross-border projects and a bargaining chip in negotiations with the artist. Under the new ruling, songwriters would get back all of their rights, not just their American copyright.
For Tim Kappel, the attorney who represented Vetter in the case, that’s exactly the point — helping songwriters truly get the artist-friendly protections that federal lawmakers envisioned when they created the termination right in the 1970s.
“The [ruling] is consistent with Congress’ intent to provide creators with a second chance to benefit from the fruits of their labor,” Kappel tells Billboard. “There’s a fundamental fairness to that result that Mr. Vetter is dedicated to defending.”
Asked about the cries of “chaos” from his opponents, Kappel called those claims “speculative and fairly alarmist.” As to whether the ruling will “destabilize” music industry practices, he said those practices might just be ripe for disruption.
“A court is not bound to interpret the Copyright Act so as to conform to comfortable business practices,” Kappel said. “In fact, to the extent these business practices rely on misguided legal theories that prevent artists and writers from receiving the full benefit of their termination rights, we believe such practices are rightfully destabilized.”
Prosecutors have filed a superseding indictment against Sean “Diddy” Combs that includes additional victims and new allegations in the sprawling criminal case against him, according to documents entered in New York federal court on Thursday (Jan. 30). Though it includes no new charges, the amended indictment extends the amount of time Combs allegedly operated a […]
Sam Hunt will reportedly avoid charges related to a Jan. 20 stop and arrest outside Nashville for speeding and violating an anti-DUI interlock device. According to People, the former college quarterback-turned-country star was arrested and jailed last week in Henderson Country, TN, with TMZ reporting that he was jailed and released the same day on […]
A new federal report on artificial intelligence says that merely prompting a computer to write a song isn’t enough to secure a copyright on the resulting track — but that using AI as a “brainstorming tool” or to assist in a recording studio would be fair game.
In a long-awaited report issued Wednesday (Jan. 29), the U.S. Copyright Office reiterated the agency’s basic stance on legal protections for AI-generated works: That only human authors are eligible for copyrights, but that material created with the assistance of AI can qualify on a case-by-case basis.
Amid the surging growth of AI technology over the past two years, the question of copyright coverage for outputs has loomed large for the nascent industry, since works that aren’t protected by copyrights would be far harder for their creators to monetize.
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“Where that [human] creativity is expressed through the use of AI systems, it continues to enjoy protection,” said Shira Perlmutter, Register of Copyrights, in the report. “Extending protection to material whose expressive elements are determined by a machine, however, would undermine rather than further the constitutional goals of copyright.”
Simply using a written prompt to order an AI model to spit out an entire song or other work would fail that test, the Copyright Office said. The report directly quoted from a comment submitted by Universal Music Group, which likened that scenario to “someone who tells a musician friend to ‘write me a pretty love song in a major key’ and then falsely claims co-ownership.”
“Prompts alone do not provide sufficient human control to make users of an AI system the authors of the output,” the agency wrote. “Prompts essentially function as instructions that convey unprotectible ideas.”
But the agency also made clear that using AI to help create new works would not automatically void copyright protection — and that when AI “functions as an assistive tool” that helps a person express themselves, the final output would “in many circumstances” still be protected.
“There is an important distinction between using AI as a tool to assist in the creation of works and using AI as a stand-in for human creativity,” the Office wrote.
To make that point, the report cited specific examples that would likely be fair game, including Hollywood studios using AI-powered tech to “de-age” actors in movies. The report also said AI could be used as a “brainstorming tool,” quoting from a Recording Academy submission that said artists are currently using AI to “assist them in creating new music.”
“In these cases, the user appears to be prompting a generative AI system and referencing, but not incorporating, the output in the development of her own work of authorship,” the agency wrote. “Using AI in this way should not affect the copyrightability of the resulting human-authored work.”
Wednesday’s report, like previous statements from the Copyright Office on AI, offered broad guidance but avoided hard-and-fast rules. Songs and other works that use AI will require “case-by-case determinations,” the agency said, as to whether they “reflect sufficient human contribution” to merit copyright protection. The exact legal framework for deciding such cases was not laid out in the report.
The new study on copyrightability is the second of three studies the agency is conducting on AI. The first report, issued last year, recommended federal legislation banning the use of AI to create fake replicas of real people; bills that would do so are pending before Congress.
The final report, set for release at some point in the future, deals with the biggest AI legal question of all: whether AI companies break the law when they “train” their models on vast quantities of copyrighted works. That question — which could implicate trillions of dollars in damages and exert a profound effect on future AI development — is already the subject of widespread litigation.
As of January, Warner Music Group (WMG) executive vp/general counsel Paul Robinson has worked in the legal department of the company for 30 years. During that time, he has seen “three different owners, seven CEOs and we’ve gone private and public two different times,” he says. “There also have been all of these macro changes in the music business” — which is something of an understatement. What hasn’t changed much, he says, is the culture of the company: “It’s always been an artist- friendly, songwriter-friendly culture, and we’ve always had a great relationship between recorded music and publishing.”
Robinson was slated to receive the 2025 Entertainment Law Initiative Service Award on Jan. 31 at the organization’s annual Grammy Week luncheon at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. But since the event was canceled in the wake of the Los Angeles wildfires, he will receive the honor at next year’s gathering.
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Robinson started at WMG in 1995 after working at Mayer Katz Baker Leibowitz, which at the time did a significant amount of the label group’s legal work. Robinson got the top job in 2006 and helped steer the company through the worst years of the music business, to its 2013 acquisition of Parlophone Label Group from Universal Music Group, and into the streaming-led recovery and a successful 2020 initial public offering.
Like the rest of the industry, WMG is now at a point where streaming growth in developed markets is slowing and the challenges of artificial intelligence (AI) loom — and in a way that will especially test it as the smallest of the three majors. Which is why, Robinson says, “From my point of view, it’s important to be perceived as, and to be, the most artist-friendly, songwriter-friendly company” — a message that WMG sent by being the first major to adopt artist-friendly policies on “digital breakage” in 2009 and on sharing gains from equity sales, such as with Spotify in 2016. “Jac Holzman, when he started Elektra, used to have this love-and-affection clause in his contracts that said the label will treat artists with love and affection and the artist will treat the label with a modicum of respect,” Robinson recalls. “And it’s great because it brings to mind the imbalance: Artists will not always love their labels, but we always have to love them and we hope that they at least respect us.”
Your father is Irwin Robinson, the prominent publishing executive who ran Chappell/Intersong and then EMI Music Publishing. Did you purposefully decide to follow him into the same business?
That was how it ended up, but they say there are no accidents. In some ways, I was afraid to go into the music business. There were huge shoes for me to step into. I thought I wanted to be a doctor, and then I worked at a hospital one summer and I decided, “Maybe I don’t want to be a doctor.” I was a huge music fan as well as a singer, and I thought, “I’ll just go to law school and see what happens.” Maybe I was avoiding it.
Robinson’s father gave him this 1956 letter from legendary songwriter-composer Cole Porter to his lawyer, John Wharton, at Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison. “I like it because in a single letter, he talks about the relatively important issue of assigning his renewal rights to Chappell and the relatively unimportant issue of a songbook being able to stay on a piano rack,” he says. “God is in the details.”
Krista Schlueter
Billboard can reveal that you were the singer in a new wave band.
I was one of the singers. We were called The Doctors. The musicians in the band all wore scrubs, and we were the hit of Williams College campus for a year. In fact, they asked The Doctors to play at my college reunion and we’re doing it.
You’re one of the few people who has been in the same department at the same company since the Napster era. Any lessons from then on how the industry should deal with AI?
Probably to lean into change. Maybe there were people in 1999 at Warner Music Group who saw peer-to-peer coming, but I feel like we were caught very much off guard, and I don’t think that’s been the case with AI. Also, with peer-to-peer, there wasn’t a great deal around until iTunes in 2003, so we’re also in a better place that way. There are services we can strike deals with now.
What are the best- and worst-case scenarios for the industry for generative AI?
[That’s] probably less of a general counsel question than [one for] business development, but I think the worst-case scenario is that somehow it’s determined that you don’t need permission to train an AI model and the market is flooded with a huge volume of content that dilutes legitimate music, in the same way services are flooded now with music that very few people listen to — but in turbo. The best case is that AI becomes an incredible tool for artists and songwriters and lets them up their game and release content in languages they don’t speak.
“This is a 1994 photo from my wedding of
my then-partners from Mayer Katz Baker Leibowitz & Roberts and their wives,” he says. “WMG was Mayer Katz’s biggest client.”
Krista Schlueter
The streaming model seems to be evolving. There’s talk of “Streaming 2.0.” What kind of terms are you looking for now in streaming deals?
Trying to lock in per-subscriber minimums and reduce discounts for family plans and so on. That’s where we are focused.
When you started in the music business, there were six major labels. Now there are three. Does that change the nature of competition?
Even though there are only three majors, it feels like it’s never been more competitive. All you have to do is look at the change in artist deals over time.
I’m assuming you mean that deals now favor artists? Is it harder to invest in them under these circumstances?
No. Every year, our A&R spend increases. When I started, we were getting eight-album deals, but we were signing artists where, because there was no internet, their following was probably their hometown and they needed a huge amount of development. Today, we hardly ever sign an artist that doesn’t have a significant social media presence, and those artists don’t need as much development.
“Believe it or not,” Robinson says, he has had the same office chair for 30 years. “It definitely looks like a chair from 1995, but I just can’t seem to let go of it.”
Krista Schlueter
Now you also compete with distribution deals.
From an artist’s point of view, there’s a trade-off. In a distribution deal, you’re getting a bigger piece of the pie, but you’re getting less development and it’s a shorter-term relationship, so there’s probably not going to be as much investment. If you sign a frontline label deal, you’re committing to more albums and you’re getting a smaller piece of the pie, but you are getting a whole team of people behind you to develop your career. The great thing is that artists have more choice than ever.
How do you make sure artist contracts feel like win-win deals?
Deals get renegotiated all the time if they’re out of sync. If there’s an artist with a small record deal that has tremendous success, the economics of their next albums are going to look different. We’re in the personal services business and we’re in the relationship business. We want to maintain the best relationships with artists and songwriters.
Is there a deal you did that you’re especially proud of?
When we bought Parlophone Label Group, that was a huge regulatory fight, and I would say it was a win-win. UMG had to sell Parlophone, we were the best buyer, and they were looking for a good price, which today looks like a really low price. We paid about $800 million, probably about a seven-and-a-half times multiple, which at the time was huge. We were much more U.S. weighted in our revenue, and we bought a bunch of European assets. So it rebalanced us in terms of geography, and we acquired great repertoire and some great artists.
What has been some of the most memorable litigation that you have overseen? The case in which Led Zeppelin was sued for copyright infringement by a trustee for the estate of Spirit frontman Randy Wolfe comes to mind.
The exciting thing about the Zeppelin case was not only winning, after having been dealt a bunch of blows — we won in trial court and we were reversed — but changing the trajectory of copyright infringement litigation. It was a beat-back of what was, I think, the bad law of the “Blurred Lines” case.
Robinson never met Prince, but he is such a big fan that two people gave him signed limited-edition lithographs of the New Yorker cover commemorating the artist’s death. “He was an incredibly distinctive artist. For his first album, Warner Records let him do everything. They basically said, ‘Go in the studio and do it.’ That didn’t happen much in 1977.”
Krista Schlueter
This story appears in the Jan. 25, 2025 issue of Billboard.
Spotify won a ruling Wednesday dismissing a lawsuit from the Mechanical Licensing Collective that accused the streamer of unfairly slashing royalty rates, with a federal judge ruling that Spotify’s move was supported by “unambiguous” regulations.
The MLC sued last year, claiming Spotify had “unilaterally and unlawfully” chosen to cut its music royalty payments nearly in half through bookmaking trickery – namely, by claiming that the addition of audiobooks to the platform entitled the company to pay a lower “bundled” rate.
But in her decision on Wednesday, Judge Analisa Torres said that federal royalty rate rules clearly allowed Spotify to legally claim the lower rate, rejecting MLC’s argument that the company was not actually offering a “bundle” of services.
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“Audiobook streaming is a product or service that is distinct from music streaming and has more than token value,” the judge wrote, alluding to the specific wording of the federal rule. “Premium is, therefore, properly categorized as a Bundle.”
A spokeswoman for the MLC did not immediately return a request for comment on the ruling.
The MLC, which collects streaming royalties for songwriters and publishers, filed its lawsuit in late May — a week after Billboard estimated that Spotify’s move would result in the company paying roughly $150 million less over the next year. In its complaint, the MLC claimed Spotify was “erroneously recharacterizing” the nature of its streaming services to secure the lower rate.
“The financial consequences of Spotify’s failure to meet its statutory obligations are enormous for songwriters and music publishers,” the group’s attorneys wrote at the time. “If unchecked, the impact on songwriters and music publishers of Spotify’s unlawful underreporting could run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.”
At issue in the lawsuit is Spotify’s recent addition of audiobooks to its premium subscription service. The streamer believes that because of the new offering, it’s now entitled to pay a discounted “bundled” royalty rate under the federal legal settlement that governs how much streamers pay rightsholders.
In Wednesday’s ruling, Judge Torres agreed. She said the rules required only that Spotify offered a different service and that it provided users with more than “token value” – and that the addition of audiobooks was clearly covered by those terms.
MLC’s attorneys had argued that audiobooks were that kind of “token” non-factor, since Spotify didn’t raises prices when it added them and only a small proportion of subscribers actually listen to them. MLC had claimed Spotify added the books was merely a “pretext” to cut rates for music.
Spotify moved to dismiss the case in August, calling it “nonsensical” and “wasteful.” The company’s attorneys blasted the MLC’s argument that the audiobooks were aimed at a legal loophole, saying it “profoundly devalues the contributions of the tens of thousands of book authors.”
In her decision on Wednesday, Judge Torres sided with Spotify’s argument. Though she said the new offering might strike ordinary consumers as more of a “two-for-one deal” than a traditional bundle, she said Spotify’s addition of the books had clearly brought more than nominal value to its users.
“MLC cannot plausibly claim that having access to audiobooks is not something of intrinsic and monetary value to many, even if only a fraction of Spotify’s millions of Premium subscribers may take advantage of it,” the judge wrote. “The court can draw only one conclusion: that 15 hours of monthly audiobook streaming is a product or service that has more than token value.”
If anything, Judge Torres said, Spotify had “likely paid more in royalties to MLC than it was otherwise required to pay” because it did not immediately claim bundled status after introducing the audiobook feature.
In addition to dismissing the lawsuit, Judge Torres did not give MLC a chance to refile the case, saying the law was clear and that amending the accusations would be futile. The group can still challenge the ruling at a federal appeals court, however.
In a statement to Billboard on Wednesday, a Spotify spokesperson said the company was “pleased” with the court’s decision: “Bundle offerings play a critical role in expanding the interest in paying for music and growing the pie for the music industry. We know the regulations can be complex, but there’s plenty of room for collaboration—and our recent deal with [Universal Music Publishing Group] shows how direct licenses can create flexibility and additional benefits.”
A Detroit rapper is suing Lyft for discrimination over allegations that one of the company’s drivers told her she was too large to fit inside his car.
In a lawsuit filed in Michigan court Monday (Jan. 27), Dank Demoss (Dajua Blanding) says the driver of a black Mercedes sedan told her during the Jan. 18 incident that she was “too big” for the backseat of his car and that “his tires were not capable of supporting plaintiff’s weight.”
“Defendant Lyft … unlawfully discriminated against plaintiff based on her weight,” Blanding’s attorneys write in the lawsuit, which was obtained by Billboard. Blanding, who has described herself as a “Big Beautiful Woman” on social media, says she was embarrassed, humiliated and suffered “mental anguish.”
The lawsuit comes after Blanding posted an alleged video of the incident to TikTok and other platforms, showing her arguing with the driver over his seeming refusal to take her.
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In the video, she can be heard telling the driver, “I can fit in this car,” after which he quickly responds, “Believe me, you can’t.” After telling Blanding that he’s “been in this situation before,” the driver can be heard saying that she needs to order a pricier “Uber XL” to accommodate her size.
Blanding’s post on TikTok has been viewed more than 345,000 times; another clip on Instagram has been liked more than 7,000 times.
In her complaint filed Monday, Blanding says the driver’s refusal violates Michigan’s civil rights laws, which prohibit any discrimination for public accommodations based on a variety of factors, including a person’s weight.
“Plaintiff’s weight was at least one factor that made a difference in defendants’ treatment of plaintiff and subjected her to a hostile environment,” her lawyers write.
In a statement to Billboard, a Lyft spokesperson declined to comment on the specifics of a pending legal action, but stressed that its driver regulations “explicitly prohibit harassment or discrimination.”
“Lyft unequivocally condemns all forms of discrimination — we believe in a community where everyone is treated with equal respect and mutual kindness,” the company 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: Limp Bizkit suffers a setback in its $200 million lawsuit against Universal Music Group; A$AP Rocky’s assault trial kicks off in Los Angeles; a deep-dive into the legal teams representing Drake and UMG in their legal battle over Kendrick Lamar’s diss track; and much more.
THE BIG STORY: Limp Bizkit’s UMG Lawsuit Hits A Snag
A lawsuit from Limp Bizkit says Universal Music Group (UMG) used “systemic” and “fraudulent” policies to deprive the band of millions in royalties. But a judge ruled last week that there was a big legal flaw in the blockbuster case.
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The lawsuit, filed last year and seeking $200 million in damages, claims that frontman Fred Durst and the band have “not seen a dime in royalties” due to “fraudulent” policies by UMG. The lawsuit argued the label’s conduct was so egregious that the band was entitled to “rescission” — a legal term for a ruling that would void its entire decades-long deal with UMG.
Rescission is not Limp Bizkit’s only legal angle, but it’s crucial to the band’s case. Without it, the group can’t pursue its separate allegations of copyright infringement — claims that would carry a huge damages award if proven. Such a claim could only succeed if the band’s contracts are voided and it legally regains its ownership of the copyrights.
It turns out Friday (Jan. 24) was just one of those days. In a ruling on UMG’s motion to dismiss the case, Judge Percy Anderson rejected the rescission claim — noting that, despite the band’s claim to have never been paid, it had in fact been “paid millions in advances” and that UMG had fronted “substantial sums” to produce its albums.
“Plaintiffs seek rescission of contracts that have governed the parties’ relationship beginning in 1996 — nearly 30 years — [but] plaintiffs have not plausibly alleged the type of ‘substantial’ or ‘total failure’ in the performance of the contracts that could support rescission,” the judge wrote.
The ruling isn’t a total defeat. Judge Anderson didn’t reach conclusions on many of the lawsuit’s other legal claims, including fraudulent concealment and intentional misrepresentation, and gave Limp Bizkit’s lawyers a chance to fix the rescission claim. But the judge’s wording suggested he will be skeptical of revoking a contract when “millions in royalties were advanced and paid under decades-old agreements.”
Following Friday’s decision, Limp Bizkit has until early next month to refile an amended version of the lawsuit. We’ll keep you posted at Billboard when they do so.
Other top stories this week…
A$AP SHOOTING TRIAL – A criminal trial in Los Angeles kicked off for rapper A$AP Rocky over accusations that he fired a gun at former friend A$AP Relli on a Hollywood street in 2021. The star (Rakim Meyers), charged with two felony counts of assault with a firearm, faces 24 years in prison if convicted after turning down a plea deal for just 180 days in county jail. In opening statements, prosecutors told jurors Rocky fired a 9mm pistol and revealed that they had recovered a loaded magazine from such a gun during a search of his home. Defense attorneys responded by arguing that Rocky carried only a “prop gun” and had fired it as a warning to “scare” Relli because he was attacking another A$AP crew member. Stay tuned: Rihanna, Rocky’s wife, is expected to appear in court on Wednesday (Jan. 29).
LAWYER UP – With Drake’s lawsuit against UMG over Kendrick Lamar’s diss track “Not Like Us” still in the earliest stages, I wrote a deep-dive on the high-powered legal teams each side has hired. For Drake, that meant turning to a veteran litigator who has made a name for himself representing the alleged victims of conspiracy theories on the internet. For UMG, it meant hiring one of the biggest law firms in the world — and one that the music giant has repeatedly used in major cases over the years.
MICHAEL MOVIE DELAY – An upcoming Michael Jackson biopic has been delayed for months due to a recently revealed, decades-old legal agreement that will require costly re-shoots of key scenes. First reported last week by the news site Puck, the agreement barred any portrayal of the family of Jordan Chandler, a then-13-year-old boy who accused the superstar singer of molestation in the 1990s — but the movie featured the family prominently anyway. A source with knowledge of the film’s production told Billboard that re-shoots are already scheduled and that the movie’s ultimate release — now scheduled for October — is not in jeopardy.
THERE GOES GRAVITY – Eight Mile Style, the publishing company that owns the copyrights to Eminem’s “Lose Yourself,” filed an infringement lawsuit against a Ford dealership near the rapper’s native Detroit, accusing the company of using the iconic track in TikTok videos that warned viewers they “only get one shot” to buy a special edition truck. The case is just the latest over social media videos allegedly featuring uncleared music — a problem that has recently led to litigation against Chili’s, Marriott and a slew of NBA teams.
SPEIDI SUIT – Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag joined more than 20 other property owners in suing the city of Los Angeles over the recent devastating fires in Southern California. Attorneys for Montag — whose 2010 album recently re-charted after going viral — claim the city’s decision to “drain” a local reservoir left firefighters without enough water to battle the blaze effectively.
CHRIS BROWN SUES – The R&B star filed a defamation case against Warner Bros. Discovery over a 2024 documentary claiming he had a long history of sexually abusing women. Brown’s attorneys say Warner’s ID network released the movie in “their pursuit of likes, clicks, downloads and dollars” even though they knew it contained false and damaging claims about him: “They did so after being provided proof that their information was false.”
ROCK & ROLL FAIR USE – The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame asked a federal judge to dismiss a copyright lawsuit over an image of Eddie Van Halen snapped by Neil Zlozower, a prolific rock photographer who has filed dozens of such cases in recent years. In seeking to toss the case, the Rock Hall argued that it made legal “fair use” of the Van Halen pic, saying it was part of a museum exhibit designed to “educate the public about the history of rock and roll music.”
MANSON NOT CHARGED – Los Angeles prosecutors announced that Marilyn Manson (Brian Warner) won’t face criminal charges following a four-year investigation into allegations of domestic violence and sexual assault. The city’s newly-elected DA praised the “courage and resilience of the women who came forward,” but said that the statute of limitations had expired for any domestic violence charges against the rocker and that his office simply could not prove a sexual assault charge in court.
“BRAZEN THIEVERY” – Independent label and publisher Artist Partner Group (APG) filed a copyright lawsuit against Create Music Group, claiming that the digital distributor uploaded and monetized songs on YouTube that it didn’t actually own. “Create’s ‘business model’ is to steal the intellectual property and contractual rights of innocent rightsholders,” APG’s attorneys wrote.
DIDDY DEFAMATION – Sean “Diddy” Combs lodged a defamation lawsuit over allegations that a man named Courtney Burgess falsely claimed to have videos of the embattled hip-hop mogul committing sexual assault. The lawsuit, which also names Burgess’ attorney Ariel Mitchell as a defendant, claims the fake reports about the videos caused him “profound reputational and economic injury and severe prejudice” ahead of his looming criminal trial on sex trafficking and racketeering charges.
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.