{"id":1577,"date":"2024-07-02T19:42:58","date_gmt":"2024-07-02T19:42:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/pharrell-sued-over-socks-plus-diplo-village-people-more-law-news\/"},"modified":"2024-07-02T19:42:58","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T19:42:58","slug":"pharrell-sued-over-socks-plus-diplo-village-people-more-law-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/pharrell-sued-over-socks-plus-diplo-village-people-more-law-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Pharrell Sued Over Socks – Plus Diplo, Village People & More Law News"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tThis 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. <\/i><\/p>\n

\n\tThis week: Pharrell Williams and Louis Vuitton face a trademark lawsuit over \u201cPocket Socks\u201d; Diplo is hit with a lawsuit claiming he distributed \u201crevenge porn\u201d; the Village People move forward with a lawsuit against Disney; a longtime attorney repping Britney Spears moves on; and much more.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

\n\t\tTop stories this week\u2026<\/strong>\t<\/h2>\n

\n\tSOCKED WITH A LAWSUIT <\/strong>\u2013 Pharrell Williams and Louis Vuitton were hit with a trademark lawsuit<\/a><\/strong> over their launch of a high-end line of \u201cPocket Socks\u201d a literal sock-with-a-pocket that launched at Paris Fashion Week last year and sells for the whopping price of $530. The case was filed by a California company called Pocket Socks Inc. that says it\u2019s been using that same name for more than a decade on a similar product.\u00a0<\/p>\n

AI FIRMS FIRE BACK<\/strong> \u2013 Suno and Udio, the two AI music startups sued by the major record label last week over allegations that they had stolen copyrighted works on a mass scale to create their models, fired back with statements in their defense<\/a><\/strong>. Suno called its tech \u201ctransformative\u201d and promised that it would only generate \u201ccompletely new outputs\u201d; Udio said it was \u201ccompletely uninterested in reproducing content in our training set.\u201d<\/p>\n

REVENGE PORN CLAIMS<\/strong> \u2013 Diplo was sued by an unnamed former romantic partner who accused him of violating \u201crevenge porn\u201d laws<\/a><\/strong> by sharing sexually-explicit videos and images of her without permission. NYPD confirmed to Billboard<\/em> that a criminal investigation into the alleged incident was also underway.\u00a0<\/p>\n

DISCO v. DISNEY<\/strong> \u2013 A California judge refused to dismiss<\/a><\/strong> a lawsuit filed by the Village People that claims the Walt Disney Co. has blackballed the legendary disco band from performing at Disney World. Disney had invoked California\u2019s anti-SLAPP law and argued it had a free speech right to book whatever bands it chooses, but a judge ruled that the company had failed to show the issue was linked to the kind of \u201cpublic conversation\u201d that\u2019s protected under the statute.\u00a0<\/p>\n

WRIT ME BABY ONE MORE TIME<\/strong> \u2013 More than two years after Mathew Rosengart<\/strong> helped Britney Spears escape the longstanding legal conservatorship imposed by her father, the powerhouse litigator is no longer representing<\/a><\/strong> the pop star. In a statement, the Greenberg Traurig attorney said he was shifting to focusing on other clients: \u201cIt\u2019s been an honor to serve as Britney\u2019s litigator and primarily to work with her to achieve her goals.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

PHONY FEES?<\/strong> \u2013 SiriusXM was hit with a class action lawsuit<\/a><\/strong> that claims the company has been earning billions in revenue by tacking a shady \u201cU.S. Music Royalty Fee\u201d onto consumers\u2019 bills. The fee \u2014 allegedly 21.4% of the actual advertised price \u2014 represents a \u201cdeceptive pricing scheme whereby SiriusXM falsely advertises its music plans at lower prices than it actually charges,\u201d the suit claims.\u00a0<\/p>\n

DIVORCE DRAMA <\/strong>\u2013 Amid an increasingly ugly divorce case, Billy Ray Cyrus filed a new response<\/a><\/strong> claiming that he had been abused physically, verbally and emotionally by his soon-to-be-ex-wife, Firerose. The filing actually came in response to allegations that it was Cyrus who had subjected Firerose to \u201cpsychological abuse\u201d during their short-lived marriage.\u00a0<\/p>\n

UK ROYALTIES LAWSUIT<\/strong> \u2013 A group of British musicians filed a joint lawsuit<\/a><\/strong> against U.K. collecting society PRS, accusing the organization of a \u201clack of transparency\u201d and \u201cunreasonable\u201d terms in how it licenses and administers live performance rights. The case, filed at London\u2019s High Court, was brought by King Crimson\u2019s Robert Fripp, as well as rock band The Jesus and Mary Chain and numerous other artists.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1578,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2215,153,310,2246,473,2227,412,2182],"class_list":["post-1577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-diplo","tag-law","tag-news","tag-people","tag-pharrell","tag-socks","tag-sued","tag-village"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}