Dua Lipa is suing Samsung for using her image to sell TVs:
The lawsuit includes an image of what it says is the infringing television box. On the box is a photograph of Lipa backstage at Austin City Limits in 2024, which the complaint said is a copyrighted image owned by the singer.
Lipa asserts Samsung has refused to stop using her image despite repeated demands. The electronics company “has been dismissive and callous” to her requests, according to the complaint.
A jury in a high-stakes antitrust trial found Wednesday that Live Nation and its subsidiary Ticketmaster illegally maintained monopoly power in the ticketing market.
Jurors delivered the verdict in federal court in New York City after around five weeks of trial, which featured testimony from dozens of witnesses. The jury began deliberating Friday.
Ex-Turnstle guitarist Brady Ebert has been charged with attempted murder:
A former guitarist of the Baltimore hardcore band Turnstile is accused of intentionally hitting the lead singer’s father with a car and leaving him with severe trauma to both of his legs.
Brady Ebert, 33, of Silver Spring, was taken into custody on Wednesday on charges of attempted second-degree murder and first-degree assault, and a district court commissioner ordered him to be held without bond.
A “term sheet” spelling out details of the pact said Live Nation had agreed to let venues reach deals that would let a certain portion of tickets be sold by entities other than Ticketmaster. It also would let up to 50% of all tickets to be sold through any ticketing marketplace at amphitheaters that Live Nation owns, operates or controls.
The term sheet also called for Ticketmaster to cap its service fees at those amphitheaters at 15% and to divest ownership or control of 13 amphitheaters, including venues in Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Syracuse, New York, and Austin, Texas. It said Live Nation will create a $280 million settlement fund to settle claims or pay civil penalties to states.
Casey Wasserman will sell his talent agency following an exodus of artists due to his ties to Epstein.
Casey Wasserman has announced plans to sell his talent agency, the Wasserman Group, after an increasing number of clients began cutting ties following his name’s appearance in the latest batch of Epstein-related documents.
“At this moment, I believe that I have become a distraction,” Wasserman wrote in a memo sent to his company late Friday night. “That is why I have begun the process of selling the company.”
Eric Melvin of NOFX has sued Fat Mike in civil court:
Read More “Eric Melvin Files Civil Suit Against Fat Mike”Eric Melvin is not here today with us because of the following reason: at 8am on Monday morning, after the final NOFX show ever, Eric Melvin’s lawyers served Fat Mike legal papers accusing him of financial malfeasance. Ten hours earlier we finished playing the final show of our 42-year career. It was the most amazing and emotional send-off ever, nothing but love, family, tears and love. That letter broke my heart, as well as the rest of the band and the crew. It still hurts today, and it hurts right now saying it.
“Temu manufactured and sold a myriad of items that are counterfeit or blatant copies of Plaintiff’s artwork, products, trademarks, and intellectual property,” the suit elaborated, also including multiple screenshots of allegedly infringing MF Doom merch listings.
From there, Temu returned fire in October with a dismissal motion that placed the alleged trademark infringement blame on the shoulders of “independent third-party sellers.”
Evidently, this argument did the trick; Judge Blumenfeld stressed the seller-marketplace distinction when doing away with the MF Doom estate’s direct infringement claim.
In the judge’s view, the plaintiff “cites no authority holding that price control renders an online marketplace a ‘seller’ liable for direct infringement,” while “the presence of Temu’s name on packaging…does not support an inference that Temu is the seller of any product, let alone the products at issue here.”
Ashley King, writing for Digital Music News:
A shareholder class action lawsuit has been filed against StubHub following its post-IPO stock price plunge. The lawsuit alleges the company made materially false or misleading statements, failing to disclose “material adverse information” regarding its business and cash flow.
The complaint, filed in New York federal court on Monday, is one of at least three lawsuits stemming from StubHub’s lackluster quarterly earnings report. It was filed by investors who bought into StubHub’s $758 million initial public offering (IPO) in September. At least four other law firms have announced that they’ve opened their own investigations into StubHub’s numbers.
Twenty One Pilots have filed a lawsuit against Temu:
As evidence, the complaint includes dozens of pages of photos comparing official merch to the alleged counterfeit products sold on Temu. One example features an official $35 Twenty One Pilots t-shirt alongside a strikingly similar replica sold on Temu for $7.54.
Just a quick public service announcement: If you, or someone you know, had your songs distributed by No Sleep Records, a law-firm has been helping artists get control back.
The complaint alleges that between Nov. 1, 2022 and Dec. 30, 2023, the defendants bought at least 379,776 tickets for approximately $57 million. A portion was allegedly resold on secondary marketplaces for approximately $64 million.
To scoop up all those tickets, the FTC alleges that the defendants used “thousands of fictitious Ticketmaster accounts, thousands of virtual and traditional credit card numbers, proxy or spoofed IP addresses, and SIM banks to bypass or otherwise avoid security measures, access control systems, or other technological controls or measures on Ticketmaster’s websites that would have otherwise blocked or prevented them from violating Ticketmaster’s posted ticket purchase limits.”
Turkish authorities have responded to the allegations, with the Turkish Competition Authority (RK) opening a formal investigation on July 4. That investigation will look into Spotify’s market practices, including allegations of playlist bribery, manipulation of royalties, and unfair advantages granted to certain artists or labels. The probe is broad and examines both anti-competitive behavior and broader content issues raised by these artists.
Ronnie Radke has lost his defamation lawsuit against Anthony Fantano.
Maxwell Zeff, writing for TechCrunch:
A lawyer representing Anthropic admitted to using an erroneous citation created by the company’s Claude AI chatbot in its ongoing legal battle with music publishers, according to a filing made in a Northern California court on Thursday.
Claude hallucinated the citation with “an inaccurate title and inaccurate authors,” Anthropic says in the filing, first reported by Bloomberg. Anthropic’s lawyers explain that their “manual citation check” did not catch it, nor several other errors that were caused by Claude’s hallucinations.
Anthropic apologized for the error and called it “an honest citation mistake and not a fabrication of authority.”
The U.S. Justice Department is conducting a criminal antitrust probe of Live Nation and AEG’s response to concert cancellations at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, Live Nation confirmed while denying any collusion on Thursday. The probe is focused on whether the live-event companies colluded on refund policies for canceled concerts, according to an earlier report by Bloomberg News.
Collusion with competitors can be a criminal offense under antitrust laws. Probes do not always result in charges.