{"id":2473,"date":"2024-09-03T19:52:07","date_gmt":"2024-09-03T19:52:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/britney-spears-perfume-fight-isaac-hayes-v-trump-more-legal-news\/"},"modified":"2024-09-03T19:52:07","modified_gmt":"2024-09-03T19:52:07","slug":"britney-spears-perfume-fight-isaac-hayes-v-trump-more-legal-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/britney-spears-perfume-fight-isaac-hayes-v-trump-more-legal-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Britney Spears Perfume Fight, Isaac Hayes v. Trump & More Legal 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. This week: Allegations of corporate \u201csabotage\u201d of Revlon\u2019s Britney Spears partnership; the estate of Isaac Hayes wins an injunction against Donald Trump over music at rallies; a judge rules on Missy Elliot\u2019s copyright battle; and much more.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n\t\tTHE BIG STORY: The Great Britney Fragrance Heist<\/strong>\t<\/h2>\n

\n\tCorporate espionage AND Britney Spears? We\u2019re in.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Two decades after the singer launched a lucrative perfume partnership with Revlon\u2019s Elizabeth Arden, the company is now accusing several former employees and an upstart rival (Give Back Beauty) of effectively stealing the superstar. In a lawsuit filed last week, Revlon\u2019s attorneys called it a \u201ccarefully planned and executed grab.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cRevlon and Elizabeth Arden were completely unaware that Revlon\u2019s own team was actively sabotaging one of their most valuable licensing relationships,\u201d the company\u2019s lawyers claim.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In technical terms, the lawsuit accuses the defendants of theft of trade secrets and so-called tortious interference with their business and contracts. It also accuses the individual employees of breach of their contracts and breach of their duty of loyalty to Revlon. Britney isn\u2019t accused of any wrongdoing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Give Back Beauty strongly denied the allegations, telling Billboard<\/em> that the allegations were \u201centirely without merit\u201d and that it would \u201caggressively defend any attempt to impugn the integrity of our company. Revlon, for its part, mostly stressed that it wasn\u2019t suing Spears herself: \u201cWe value our 20-year partnership and wish Britney all the best.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Revlon doesn\u2019t feel the same way about the departing employees \u2014 labeling one as a \u201cdouble-agent\u201d who assisted a rival company in \u201ctaking the Britney Brands business away\u201d while she was outwardly working to renew the account for Elizabeth Arden. For the rest of the lawsuit\u2019s allegations, go read our full story here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

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

\n\tTRUMP INJUNCTION <\/strong>\u2013 The estate of Isaac Hayes won a preliminary injunction<\/a><\/strong> prohibiting former President Donald Trump<\/strong> and his campaign from playing the singer\u2019s \u201cHold On, I\u2019m Coming\u201d at rallies. Hayes is one of many artists to complain about the former president using their music in the 2024 campaign, but thus far he\u2019s the only one to actually sue over it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

MISSY FACES TRIAL <\/strong>\u2013 A federal judge ruled that Missy Elliott must face trial<\/a><\/strong> in a copyright lawsuit filed by a man named Terry Williams, who claims to have co-written several decades-old songs she released with the group Sistas. The judge did, however, dismiss one of the lawsuit\u2019s key claims: That Terry and Elliott had co-written \u201cHeartbroken,\u201d a 1996 track released by the late Aaliyah.\u00a0<\/p>\n

AUCTION DELAYED <\/strong>\u2013 A court-ordered auction of Damon Dash<\/strong>\u2019s one-third stake in Jay-Z\u2019s Roc-A-Fella Records was postponed for three weeks<\/a><\/strong> \u2014 and the minimum price for the sale was more than doubled to help cover Dash\u2019s massive unpaid tax and child support debts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

DEAL IN THE SKY <\/strong>\u2013 A lawsuit filed by Journey member Jonathan Cain against bandmate Neal Schon was largely resolved<\/a><\/strong> after Schon conceded to the appointment of a neutral third party to resolve the \u201cdeadlock\u201d that Cain has claimed is crippling the band\u2019s operations. The case, filed last month, was the latest in a string of legal battles among members of the \u201cDon\u2019t Stop Believin\u2019\u201d band.\u00a0<\/p>\n

ROYALTIES ROW <\/strong>\u2013 Spotify fired back<\/a><\/strong> at a lawsuit filed by the Mechanical Licensing Collective that claims the streamer used the addition of audiobooks to \u201cunlawfully\u201d cut its music royalty payments nearly in half. In a motion to dismiss the case, Spotify called it \u201cnonsensical\u201d and claims that it \u201cprofoundly devalues the contributions of the tens of thousands of book authors.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

MANILOW v. HIPGNOSIS <\/strong>\u2013 Barry Manilow sued Hipgnosis Songs Fund<\/a><\/strong> (HSF) in federal court, seeking $1.5 million in unpaid bonuses related to the music rights company\u2019s acquisition of his catalog four years ago. The new case came a month after Hipgnosis sued Manilow in the UK alleging breach of contract relating to the bonus payments.<\/p>\n

MANSON APPEAL <\/strong>\u2013 Marilyn Manson launched an appeal<\/a><\/strong> seeking to revive his defamation lawsuit against ex-fiance Evan Rachel Wood, arguing a lower judge who dismissed much of the case ignored key evidence. The case, which claims that Wood \u201csecretly recruited, coordinated, and pressured\u201d women to make false abuse allegations against Manson, was largely dismissed last year under California\u2019s anti-SLAPP statute.\u00a0<\/p>\n

DMCA DISMISSED <\/strong>\u2013 A federal judge ruled that Universal Music Group and Playboi Carti didn\u2019t abuse the DMCA<\/a><\/strong> (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) when they issued a takedown notice \u2014 erroneously, it later turned out \u2014 against another rapper\u2019s song that used the same beat. The judge ruled that the law\u2019s safeguards against false takedowns only prohibit intentionally false use of the system.\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":2474,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[320,835,3258,3257,136,310,3265,321,409],"class_list":["post-2473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-britney","tag-fight","tag-hayes","tag-isaac","tag-legal","tag-news","tag-perfume","tag-spears","tag-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2473","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=2473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2473\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}