The Pitch newsletter is a monthly update of legal issues and news affecting or related to the music, film and television, fine arts, media, professional athletics, eSports, and gaming industries. The Pitch features a diverse cross-section of published articles, compelling news and stories, and original content curated and/or created by Arnall Golden Gregory LLP’s Entertainment & Sports industry team.
“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” – Thomas Merton
AGG News
Video Killed the Radio Star (and AI Could Kill the Rest): Tips for Protecting Artists From the Unauthorized Use of Existing Works
Oscar Wilde is credited as saying, “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.” While there is some dispute as to whether Wilde uttered these words, the message is clear: creativity and originality are worthy of praise; imitation, not so much. We may only guess what the Irish wordsmith would think about so-called generative artificial intelligence (“AI”) models and outputs.
(Source: Arnall Golden Gregory LLP, September 30, 2024)
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Industry News
18-Year-Old Files Lawsuit Over Ownership of Shohei Ohtani’s Historic 50–50 Ball, Seeks To Prevent Auction
An 18-year-old has filed a lawsuit over the ownership of the ball Shohei Ohtani made baseball history with when he became the inaugural member of the 50-50 club. On September 19, the Los Angeles Dodgers superstar went where no player has gone before, hitting his 50th homer and stealing his 50th base of the season in a 20-4 win against the Miami Marlins. The ball had been put up for auction by auctioneers Goldin, with bids starting at $500,000 and collectors able to purchase it privately outright for $4.5 million. The auction is set to begin on Friday at noon ET and end October 16.
(Source: CNN, September 30, 2024)
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Gavin Newsom Signs Bills Protecting Compensation for Child Influencers
California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed two bills into law in Los Angeles on September 26 that offer new financial protections to children who perform and appear in income-generating online content. One of those bills, California Assembly Bill 1880, expands California’s longtime Coogan Law protections for child performers to influencers and online content creators who are minors. The Coogan Law, which was signed into law in the state in 1939 and was named after child silent-film star Jackie Coogan, mandates that 15 percent of a child performer’s earnings be saved in a protected trust that they can access when they reach adulthood.
(Source: The Hollywood Reporter, September 26, 2024)
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SAG-AFTRA Calls Strike Against ‘League of Legends’
Hollywood’s performers union has called a strike against one of the video game industry’s most recognizable marquee titles. On Tuesday SAG-AFTRA announced that it was telling members to cease work for the multiplayer online game League of Legends after its producer, Formosa Interactive, “tried to subvert” the union’s ongoing video game strike on an unnamed separate title. The union is responding by calling a work stoppage against League of Legends, a game that was not previously struck and is one of Formosa Interactive’s most well-known projects (the brand has also worked on God of War and Madden NFL 24).
(Source: The Hollywood Reporter, September 24, 2024)
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Reggie Bush Lawsuit Accuses USC, Pac-12, NCAA of Profiting From His NIL ‘Without Compensating Bush One Penny’
Heisman Trophy winner Reggie Bush has filed a lawsuit against USC, the Pac-12 Conference and the NCAA seeking compensation for their use of his name, image and likeness while he was a star collegiate running back decades ago and years after he left the Trojans. “Reggie Bush received all the accolades a college football athlete could receive during his three years playing football at USC,” a lawsuit filed by Bush’s attorneys Monday in Los Angeles County Superior Court states. “And while Bush received the accolades, Defendants, NCAA, USC, and the Pac-12 Conference received all the money. “Millions upon millions of dollars of money, all derived directly from Reggie Bush’s name, image and likeness. To this day, all Defendants continue to profit from Reggie Bush’s name, image, and likeness without compensating Bush one penny.”
(Source: LA Times, September 24, 2024)
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T.I., Tiny Win $71 Million Lawsuit Against MGA Entertainment
Rapper T.I. and his wife, singer-songwriter Tameka ‘Tiny’ Harris, have been awarded a whopping $71 million by a jury in their lawsuit against MGA Entertainment, the toy conglomerate they alleged violated the intellectual property rights of their teen pop group the OMG Girlz with their popular L.O.L. Surprise! O.M.G. line of dolls. Per the Daily Journal, which first reported the news, jurors bequeathed the couple $17.8 million in real damages and $53.6 million in punitive damages at the end of the three-week trial held in a federal court in Santa Ana, Calif.
(Source: Deadline, September 23, 2024)
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With Damon Dash Roc-A-Fella Auction Looming, Can Jay-Z Take Back Rights To ‘Reasonable Doubt’?
Attorneys for Jay-Z are now sparring with lawyers for New York City over whether he can use copyright termination to retake control of his debut album Reasonable Doubt – a crucial question ahead of a court-ordered auction of Roc-A-Fella Records co-founder Damon Dash’s one-third stake in the label.
(Source: Billboard, September 23, 2024) [Subscription may be required]
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Georgia Governor's Executive Order Opens Door for Colleges to Compensate Student-Athletes for Name, Image, and Likeness
Sports betting and fantasy sports companies DraftKings, FanDuel, Underdog and bet365 wrongfully used Major League Baseball players’ images and likenesses, according to lawsuits filed Monday by the business arm of the players’ union. MLB Players Inc., which handles most business affairs of the Major League Baseball Players Association, alleged in separate suits filed in New York and Pennsylvania that the companies used player images when offering prop bets about certain players, despite having no licensing agreement to do so.
(Source: JD Supra, September 23, 2024)
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Nashville Event Prompts Indie Agents to Flag FTC About New Ticket Scalping Tech
The Federal Trade Commission is being urged to investigate technology companies that create tools for ticket scalpers that violate existing laws and drive up the price of concert tickets. The warning and call to action comes by way of a letter signed by National Independent Talent Organizations president Jack Randall and executive director Nathaniel Marro, taking aim at the World Ticket Summit. Held in Nashville earlier this month, the annual conference is organized by the National Association of Ticket Brokers, the country’s largest member organization for professional ticket resellers and individuals who list and resell tickets on sites like StubHub and SeatGeek. At this year’s summit, members of NITO – which represent independent talent agencies and management companies including Arrival Artists, High Road Touring, Paladin Artists, Q Prime, Red Light Management and TKO – “observed a sold-out exhibition hall filled with vendors selling and marketing products designed to bypass security measures for ticket purchases, in direct violation of the BOTS Act,” a Sept. 9 letter to Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan reads.
(Source: Billboard, September 19, 2024) [Subscription may be required]
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Nelly Hit With Copyright Lawsuit Over Decades-Old Album By Ex-Bandmates: ‘Lying The Entire Time’
Decades after Nelly released his chart-topping breakout Country Grammar, he’s facing a new lawsuit over the album from his St. Lunatics groupmates — who claim that the star cut them out of the credits and royalty payments. In a complaint filed September 18 in Manhattan federal court, attorneys for the St. Lunatics allege that Nelly (Cornell Haynes) repeatedly “manipulated” them into falsely thinking they’d be paid for their work on the 2000 album, which spent five weeks atop the Billboard 200. “Every time plaintiffs confronted defendant Haynes [he] would assure them as ‘friends’ he would never prevent them from receiving the financial success they were entitled to,” the lawsuit reads. “Unfortunately, plaintiffs, reasonably believing that their friend and former band member would never steal credit for writing the original compositions, did not initially pursue any legal remedies.”
(Source: Billboard, September 19, 2024) [Subscription may be required]
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Michael Jackson Estate Says Accuser Is Trying to Extract $213 Million
Michael Jackson’s estate has initiated legal proceedings against a former associate of the late pop icon, who threatened to raise fresh allegations of inappropriate conduct before the release of a film the executors hope will quell the child sex abuse claims that shadowed his later years. The man and four others told the estate in about 2019, a decade after the singer’s death, that they might go public with allegations that he had acted inappropriately with some of them when they were children. In 2020, the estate quietly struck a previously unreported settlement worth $16.5mn, under which the man and the other accusers agreed instead to defend Jackson’s reputation. Now, the people managing Jackson’s music and image rights are accusing the man of fabricating his earlier claims while seeking to extract $213mn more in a new settlement with the estate, according to an arbitration claim. They have reported the matter to the US Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles.
(Source: Financial Times, September 19, 2024) [Subscription required]
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Irving Azoff’s GMR Just Struck a $3.3 Billion Private Equity Deal, Say MBW Sources
MBW has confirmed via well-placed sources that Irving Azoff‘s US-headquartered PRO, Global Music Rights (GMR), struck a multi-billion dollar deal yesterday (September 18) with a new private equity partner. The transaction, we’re told, valued GMR at USD $3.3 billion.
(Source: Music Business Worldwide, September 19, 2024)
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Lionsgate Inks Deal With AI Firm to Mine Its Massive Film and TV Library
In a significant move, Lionsgate and the video-focused artificial intelligence research firm Runway have inked a deal that will see Runway train a new generative AI model on Lionsgate content, and will see the entertainment company use the tech as it produces future film and TV projects. While details are scarce, the companies say that the new model will be “customized to Lionsgate’s proprietary portfolio of film and television content,” and exclusive to the studio. The purpose will be to “help Lionsgate Studios, its filmmakers, directors and other creative talent augment their work.”
(Source: The Hollywood Reporter, September 18, 2024)
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Miley Cyrus Sued, Accused of Copying Bruno Mars Song on ‘Flowers’
Miley Cyrus has been hit with a lawsuit alleging she and co-songwriters Gregory Hein and Michael Pollack copied portions of a Bruno Mars single when they wrote her Grammy-winning global hit “Flowers,” according to Rolling Stone. According to a lawsuit filed Monday in Los Angeles, Tempo Music Investments claims “Flowers” includes unauthorized “exploitation” of several elements of Mars’ 2013 piano-driven ballad “When I Was Your Man.” The suit also names Sony Music Publishing, Apple, Target, Walmart, and several other companies as defendants accused of distributing “Flowers.”
(Source: Variety, September 17, 2024)
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MLB Players’ Union Sues DraftKings, FanDuel, Others Over Use of Player Images
Sports betting and fantasy sports companies DraftKings, FanDuel, Underdog and bet365 wrongfully used Major League Baseball players’ images and likenesses, according to lawsuits filed Monday by the business arm of the players’ union. MLB Players Inc., which handles most business affairs of the Major League Baseball Players Association, alleged in separate suits filed in New York and Pennsylvania that the companies used player images when offering prop bets about certain players, despite having no licensing agreement to do so.
(Source: The Athletic, September 16, 2024)
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Boomy CEO Listed as Co-Writer on Hundreds of Songs From Accused $10M Streaming Fraudster
When Michael “Mike” Smith was indicted on Sept. 4 over allegations that he used an AI music company to create “hundreds of thousands” of songs and then used bots to artificially earn $10 million in streaming income since 2017, prosecutors claimed that some of the money flowed back to that AI music company. The indictment also claimed that Smith was in consistent contact with its CEO — but it never revealed their names. ASCAP/BMI Songview records and the MLC database indicate that Alex Mitchell, CEO/founder of popular AI music company Boomy, is listed as the co-writer on at least hundreds of the 200,000 plus songs that are registered to Smith. Boomy also released a song, “This Isn’t Real Life,” jointly with Smith, CVBZ and Stunna 4 Vegas.
(Source: Billboard, September 5, 2024) [Subscription may be required]
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Plaintiffs Appeal After $4.7 Billion NFL Sunday Ticket Verdict Tossed
Lawyers representing more than two million NFL Sunday Ticket customers filed a notice of appeal, an expected move after a federal judge made the extraordinary decision to set aside the jury’s $4.7 billion verdict on Aug. 1. After a three-week trial in June, a Los Angeles jury ruled that NFL had overcharged for Sunday Ticket when the out-of-market package was distributed by DirecTV from June 17, 2011 through Feb. 7, 2023. That award, under federal antitrust law, could have been tripled to about $14 billion—more than the NFL takes in annually from its many U.S. TV distribution deals. The NFL, however, challenged the math used by the jury to come up with the award figure, arguing the number was not presented at trial. U.S. District Court Judge Philip Gutierrez ultimately agreed with the league’s lawyers.
(Source: Front Office Sports, September 3, 2024)
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SAG-AFTRA Praises California Bill Regulating Use of AI Digital Replicas of Dead Performers
SAG-AFTRA is praising the California state Senate for passing a law that restricts the usage of artificial intelligence-created digital replicas of dead performers. The actors union shared in a statement shortly after the passage of AB 1836 on Saturday, “For those who would use the digital replicas of deceased performers in films, TV shows, videogames, audiobooks, sound recordings and more, without first getting the consent of those performers’ estates, the California Senate just said NO. AB 1836 is another win in SAG-AFTRA’s ongoing strategy of enhancing performer protections in a world of generative artificial intelligence. The passing of this bill, along with AB 2602 earlier this week, build on our mosaic of protections in law and contract.”
(Source: The Hollywood Reporter, August 31, 2024)
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Barry Manilow Sues Hipgnosis for $1.5 Million in Bonus Dispute
Barry Manilow is suing Hipgnosis Songs Fund (HSF) in federal court in California seeking $1.5 million in unpaid bonuses related to the music rights company’s acquisition of his catalog four years ago. The suit by the “Mandy” singer, along with his management company Hastings, Clayton & Tucker Inc, or Stiletto Entertainment, follows a similar lawsuit HSF filed earlier this month in London alleging breach of contract relating to the bonus payments.
(Source: Billboard, August 30, 2024) [Subscription may be required]
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Spotify Blasts MLC’s Audiobook Royalties Lawsuit as ‘Nonsensical’ and ‘Wasteful’
Spotify is demanding that a federal judge toss out a lawsuit filed by the Mechanical Licensing Collective over royalty rates, calling the case “nonsensical” and “wasteful.” The MLC sued earlier this 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 service entitled the company to pay a lower “bundled” rate. But in a motion to dismiss filed in court September 3, Spotify calls those claims “meritless and wasteful” – arguing that making hundreds of thousands of audiobooks available to subscribers was not a “token” gesture aimed at reducing music royalties.
(Source: Billboard, August 29, 2024) [Subscription may be required]
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Playboi Carti & UMG Didn’t Abuse DMCA by Filing Takedown Against Rapper’s Song, Judge Rules
A federal judge says Universal Music Group and Playboi Carti didn’t abuse the Digital Millennium Copyright Act when they issued a takedown notice – erroneously, it turns out – against another rapper’s song that used the same beat. A rapper named G-Baby (Jordan White) sued the label and artist last year after they red-flagged his song “Oi!” for using the same underlying beat as Carti’s “Right Now.” The takedown turned out to be wrong — G-Baby had legally licensed the same beat that Carti had, and he had actually released his song first.
(Source: Billboard, August 29, 2024) [Subscription may be required]
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Regal Inks Multiyear Deal With Fandango on Advertising, Concessions Sales
Regal Cinemas, the second-largest movie theater chain in the United States, has inked a new multiyear deal with Fandango, the companies said Tuesday. The Knoxville, Tenn.-based movie exhibitor has linked up with the Comcast-owned ticketing giant to offer advertisers access to Regal’s digital footprint alongside Fandango’s website and apps along with sister company Rotten Tomatoes’ platform. The companies say that, together, those platforms reach 50 million entertainment consumers monthly.
(Source: The Hollywood Reporter, August 27, 2024)
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OutKast Sues EDM Duo ATLiens, Claiming Infringement of Famous Song Name
OutKast has filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against an electronic dance music duo called ATLiens – the same name as one of the iconic hip hop duo’s best-known songs. In a lawsuit lodged on August 28 in Georgia federal court, lawyers for Big Boi (Antwan Patton) and André 3000 (André Benjamin) argue that the name (a combo of “aliens” and their hometown of Atlanta) is a novel linguistic term – and that the rival group is confusing music fans by using it.
(Source: Billboard, August 23, 2024) [Subscription may be required]
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George Santos Loses Lawsuit Against Jimmy Kimmel Over Cameo Videos
Last February, Ex-Congressman Geroge Santos filed a federal lawsuit claiming that Jimmy Kimmel’s show tricked Santos into recording absurd cameo videos, which were then broadcast in a segment called “Will Santos Say It?” Santos alleged that Kimmel had infringed on his copyright and violated the Cameo terms of service. In a ruling in August, U.S. District Judge Denise Cote threw out the suit, finding that Kimmel used the videos to make a political comment, and was thus protected by the doctrine of “fair use.”
(Source: Variety, August 19, 2024)
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Mariah Carey Asks Judge to Drop ‘All I Want for Christmas’ Copyright Lawsuit
More than nine months after Mariah Carey was again sued for allegedly stealing her perennial holiday classic “All I Want for Christmas is You” from an earlier song, her attorneys have filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit by arguing that the songs share nothing but commonplace musical building blocks. In November, songwriter Vince Vance (real name Andy Stone) filed a second lawsuit against Carey accusing her of copyright infringement, arguing that her 1994 smash “was a greater than 50% clone…in both lyric choice and chord expressions” of his 1989 song of the same name, which was performed by his group Vince Vance and the Valiants (a similar lawsuit Vance filed in 2022 was subsequently dropped without prejudice, meaning he was allowed to refile). He was joined in the November action by Troy Plaintiff, who claims to have co-written the song with Vance.
(Source: Billboard, August 13, 2024) [Subscription may be required]
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You need music, I don’t know why. It’s probably one of those Joe Campbell questions, why we need ritual. We need magic, and bliss, and power, myth, and celebration and religion in our lives, and music is a good way to encapsulate a lot of it.
—
Jerry Garcia
