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Friday, May 31, 2013
by Meg McEvoy
Two companies owned by rapper Eminem May 20 filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan against Facebook Inc. and its advertising agency, alleging ads for new mobile software application Facebook Home infringe the copyright of his song Under the Influence.
Facebook unveiled its new Facebook Home app April 14 and introduced an accompanying advertisement called Airplane, which it played live at the company's Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters. The event was also streamed "all over the world," the complaint asserted.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg "has been a longtime fan of Eminem," the complaint alleged. Zuckerberg referred to himself as Eminem's well-known moniker "Slim Shady" in one of his first websites, the complaint noted.
According to the complaint, ad agency Wieden + Kennedy (W+K), which was hired to produce ads for the new app, used the music "in an effort to curry favor with Facebook by catering to Zuckerberg's personal likes and interests and/or to invoke the same irreverent theme as [Under the Influence]."
Facebook's later alteration of the music when it placed the ad on YouTube was an admission that Facebook knew it had infringed on Eminem's copyright, the complaint alleged.
W+K acknowledged in a letter to the plaintiffs that the commercial's music had been changed and that there are "clearly some similarities" between the music in the live and YouTube versions of Airplane, according to the complaint.
Eminem's companies claim as infringing both the public performance of the original composition in the live ad and the ad's "revision" of the music as a derivative work under the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 101.
The Airplane ad music "is substantially similar" to Eminem's Under the Influence "and any ordinary observer would absolutely recognize the music as being a copy," the complaint alleged.
The lawsuit requests a permanent injunction, statutory damages under the Copyright Act, actual damages, and "any and all profits attributable" to Facebook's performance and distribution of the ad.
The case was referred to a magistrate judge May 21.
Copyright 2013, The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc.
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