{"id":1752,"date":"2024-07-12T00:33:12","date_gmt":"2024-07-12T00:33:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/beastie-boys-hit-chilis-with-lawsuit-over-use-of-sabotage-in-ad\/"},"modified":"2024-07-12T00:33:12","modified_gmt":"2024-07-12T00:33:12","slug":"beastie-boys-hit-chilis-with-lawsuit-over-use-of-sabotage-in-ad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/beastie-boys-hit-chilis-with-lawsuit-over-use-of-sabotage-in-ad\/","title":{"rendered":"Beastie Boys Hit Chilis With Lawsuit Over Use of ‘Sabotage’ in Ad"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tThe Beastie Boys are suing the owner of Chilis over allegations that the restaurant chain used the rap trio\u2019s iconic 1994 song \u201cSabotage\u201d in a social media advertisement without permission.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a lawsuit filed Wednesday (July 10) in Manhattan federal court, the hip-hop legends accused Brinker International of infringing their copyrights by using the song without a license \u2014 an especially serious allegation from a trio that famously doesn\u2019t allow its music to appear in ads.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cUse of the \u2018Sabotage\u2019 sound recording, music composition and video was all without permission,\u201d the group\u2019s attorneys write. \u201cThe plaintiffs do not license \u2018Sabotage\u2019 or any of their other intellectual property for third-party product advertising purposes, and deceased Beastie Boys member Adam Yauch included a provision in his will prohibiting such uses.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Beastie Boys says the Chilis ad in question featured three men in \u201c70s-style\u201d wigs, fake mustaches, and sunglasses carrying out a \u201crobbery\u201d of food ingredients from a Chilis. The group says it clearly \u201cintended to evoke\u201d the music video to \u201cSabotage,\u201d a parody of 1970s \u201ccrime drama\u201d television programs that featured Adam \u201cAd-Rock\u201d Horovitz, Michael \u201cMike D\u201d Diamond and the late Adam \u201cMCA\u201d Yauch in similar attire.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe band\u2019s lawyers say using the song was bad enough, but that by recreating a video that featured \u201cunauthorized video impersonations of Diamond, Horovitz and Yauch, Brinkers also violated federal trademark law by duping consumers with a false endorsement.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe public was confused into believing that plaintiffs sponsored, endorsed and are associated with defendant Brinker in promoting defendant Brinker\u2019s \u2018Chili\u2019s\u2019 restaurants and products,\u201d the lawsuit reads.<\/p>\n

\n\tA spokesperson for Brinker did not immediately return a request for comment.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Beastie Boys are infamously protective of their music when it comes to advertising, a stance underscored by the fact that Yauch\u2019s will featured a provision prohibiting the use of his image, music and any art he created in advertising.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 2013, the group sued a toy company called GoldieBlox after it released a viral parody of the group\u2019s 1987 song \u201cGirls\u201d to promote its engineering and construction toys for girls, eventually winning a settlement in which the company apologized and donated a portion of its revenues to charities. And in 2015, the group won a $1.7 million verdict against Monster Energy over a video used by the energy drink company that used several of the group\u2019s songs in a promotional video.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut they\u2019ve also given certain uses of their music their blessing. In 2016, \u201cSabotage\u201d appeared in a trailer for Star Trek Beyond<\/em>; the next year, the group permitted the song to be used in an advertisement for the video game Destiny 2<\/em>. Though those were advertisements, both of them were promoting artistic works rather than products.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Beastie Boys are suing the owner of Chilis over allegations that the restaurant chain used the rap trio\u2019s iconic 1994 song \u201cSabotage\u201d in a social media advertisement […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1753,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2467,2468,2469,1067,303,2470],"class_list":["post-1752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-beastie","tag-boys","tag-chilis","tag-hit","tag-lawsuit","tag-sabotage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1752","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=1752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1752\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}