“Rap superstar Eminem, who says he could earn more than $US10 million for endorsing a product, is suing Apple Computer on grounds it used one of his hit songs in a TV advertisement without permission,” Reuters reports. “Eight Mile Style, music publisher of the artist whose real name is Marshall Mathers III, filed the copyright infringement lawsuit last Friday in US District Court in Detroit.”
“It also names Viacom, its MTV subsidiary and TBWA/Chiat/Day advertising agency as plaintiffs. Apple and Viacom both declined to comment on the pending litigation. The lawsuit claims Apple, in a television ad for its iTunes pay-per-download music store aired on MTV last year, featured a young boy with an iPod portable music player singing the lyrics to ‘Lose Yourself,’ the theme song for his hit movie ‘8 Mile’ released in 2003,” Reuters reports.
“The ad was also posted on Apple’s website, the suit says. ‘At no time did Apple, Chiat/Day or MTV receive authorization or permission to record, reproduce, perform, transmit, copy, use or otherwise exploit the composition (‘Lose Yourself’) for any purpose,’ it says,” Reuters reports. “‘Defendants have acted intentionally, recklessly, wilfully and in bad faith,’ it adds.”
Full article here.
The complete lawsuit paperwork is available online via PDF here.
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How could a company of Apple’s stature do something like this…this will set a precedence for the other songs they used in those ads. Did they have permission to use those? There must be more to this…if not, what were they thinking?
Do you really thing anyone in Apples head office would recognize the words to a RAP song, you have to be a teen ager to understand what the hell their saying!!
can someone explain how a young boy mouthing just the words to a song (w/ no audible music) be considered copyright infringement? Can we be sued for singing along w/ the songs we hear? what if someone videotapes it and uses it to sell a product?
Hey Swan,
1. Copyright Protection
2. No we cant.
3. Hell yes!
after the dust settles.. let Napster have M&M
There are several parties involved with music usage. The first is the person(s) who wrote the music and/or lyrics. And the second is the people who performed the song in an existing recording.
In this case, since no recording was used, that’s not the issue. However, the songwriter(via the publisher) needs to be compensated.
Generally, it would be up to the ad agency to secure music clearances for works used in commercials, so in this case, if convicted, it’ll be up to the parties involved to figure out who said it was “ok” to do this, and share the fines and fees.
All things considered, it would have been much cheaper for Apple to secure the rights from the publisher(for a fraction of the 10 Mill requested) than it will be if convicted.
Jeffrey,
Copyright Infringement, False Endorsement, Unfair Competition and Unjust Enrichment are civil actions, not criminal actions. Nobody will be convicted in this case, they will be found liable. Surely you remember that from the first day of your Contracts and Torts class in law school…
Before all you armchair attorney’s become judge and jury. Maybe the question is, what is the definition of “Fair Play” or “limited use” when someone sings speaks the words to a song. It’s not the artist or the music performing. What about an actor in a movie or tv show that mumbles lyrics to a song?
http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#110
RE: Plugin to view PDF doc. It’s nice but completely sucks in that you can no longer print PDF documents when it’s activated. Went back to Preview since it’s so fast w/Panther.
ME, you can print from the pdf plug in. you would just need to go to file->print. Doing that works for me.
Actually, swan, if someone videotaped you without your permission and put you in an ad, you could sue their pants off. Editorial use (news, textbooks, art) of images/video are protected by the First Amendment, but commercial (advertising, marketing, etc.) use is not.
i can see that–but a kid (not m&m) is saying words that happen to be rap lyrics in m&m’s song–can’t see any m&m performance there–just see a kid’s performance of a small portion of lyrics–which anyone is free to do–am i right? i mean, everytime somebody does an m&m kariokes at some bar, do they owe m&m $10 million?? doesn’t make since because they’re not using the actual song, but someone mimicking some words..
The composition itself is copyrighted–not just Eminem’s performance of it. Apple knew this and sought permission, was denied, and went ahead. IF that version is true, as claimed, then of course Apple should not be above the law.
You can sing Em’s (not M&M, Eminem) lyrics all you want, wherever you want, whenever you want as long as you are not getting paid to do so. The girl in the ad can sing his lyrics, but if Apple paid her to do so for the commercial, then she and Apple are in the wrong. Thats why you can karyoke any song you want at a party or club, but if you get money for it, such as a prize, then its considered a performance, and you can get sued bigtime.
And, Im pretty sure Em has those lyrics Copyrighted so any paid performance of the lyrics would be illegal.
NA$tradomos
He did have the lyrics copyrighted… after the commercial aired.
if the lyrics were not copyrighted when the commercial aired, is there a case? The copyright was obtained after the commercial was aired.
How do you copyright something? What is the process? I have been told that merely publishing a unique work with your name attached to it gives you a copyright, and that it doesn’t need to be officially registered like a patent does.
If that’s true, how could Em have copyrighted the lyrics after the commercial aired?
Just to be clear, I believe it was Chiat/Day that sought permission and was denied. I wonder if Apple knew about the fine details involved, or was that all Chiat/Day’s responsibility? Steve called after the fact to have them reconsider, but in Eminem’s typically immature way, he ceased talks with Apple/Chiat/Day. In any case, there must’ve been some legal loophole that Chiat/Day was using to get around this copyright issue (paroday, 10 sec., promo license, what have you…).
the kid sang eminem’s lyric… i’m not a fan of eminimen and i love apple… but i’m a composer… and if they did that to me without my permission i’d be pissed… and lyrics ARE copyrightable… sure he didn’t perform the song, but the kid DID… those are his words and thoughts… it may be junk to people like swan, but not to apple’s intended audience… apple is at fault here… they should have secured permission… it’s the way things are done… and the ad agency should have known that…. i can’t believe they did this…
How do you copyright something? What is the process? I have been told that merely publishing a unique work with your name attached to it gives you a copyright, and that it doesn’t need to be officially registered like a patent does.
KennyLucius, this is correct, but only applies to civil damages. If you register your work with the copyright office, you can get statutory damages for use without permission, without having to prove any actual damages. It use to be about $400, but thanks to the DMCA (and RIAA) is around $15,000 now! (per violation)
Mather is not suing for $10M, he’s trying to establish the “violation” as an endorsement by him of the iPod, which is ludicrous. Just another legal shakedown, so Chiat/Day and Apple will probably calculate what it would cost for a court defence and offer that as a settlement.
It would be fun to see the makers of M&Ms; sue Mather. They have more cause than this action.
but i don’t think the 10 mil is fair… that is IF he endorsed the product (which he didnt)…. this should cost less than if apple actually used his recording (like the way they used black eyed peas’ song)… they should pay eminem for the right to use his lyrics and that’s it… oh yeah, and damages… how much that’s going to be is anybody’s guess.
this is simply ridiculous it is the ad agencies job to procure the copy. apple has the responsibility of checking the ad agencies work. oh yeah where is the endorsement. I really don’t think M would be a part of this. If he is I would just give him the finger. Dre and 50 support the mac and maybe thats why M is mad. Maybe dre and 50 got paid for thier true endorsements of apple. While M got nothing for what his delusion of an endorsement is. M if you want money we better hear your voice or see your face. consider this your bitch slap
Sue the little boy, he did it! The headlines should read “Eminem sueing 10 year old kid for $10 milion for singing his song”. Those greedy musicians, what comes next, somebody getting sued for wearing a home made Eminem t-shirt on TV.
Anyway, it will be interesting to see how this plays out in court, Apple is on thin ice but it might hold, the spot is very short, there is no melody, and it’s comparable of dictating several lines of a movie script which is legal.
Kind of funny that a rapper is sueing somebody for “stealing” their song after they’ve been stealing every possible piece of any even remotelly popular song on the planet.
i know its not stolen. none the less Sing for the Moment
Would be funny if it turned out that they had got permission from the author of those lyrics, it just didn’t happen to be eminem!
But seriously, you can’t really form an opinion at the moment as we haven’t seen Apple’s reasoning/response to the allegations. Judging after just hearing one side isn’t very good practice.
Btw, over here we’ve got a provision in copyright law that allows the use of 2 bars without permission, you have anything like that in the states?