We’re taking a look at our favourite instances where bands took legal action against brands.
Morrissey just had a bawl about the way he was portrayed as the character Quilloughby, a vegan British musician who formerly fronted a band called The Snuffs, in The Simpsons.
The Big M wrote that the show’s scriptwriters’ “hatred” towards him is “obviously a taunting lawsuit” but went on to add, “but one that requires more funding than I could possibly muster in order to make a challenge.”
With The Simpsons is off the hook, we’re taking a look at moments in history that saw acts take brands to court. These are everything from fast foods to video games to sneakers to Aussie book publishers to toymakers.
(1) Devo Meet The Hamburglar
In 2009, McDonald’s released a series of American Idol-themed Happy Meal plastic figures inspired by different music genres; Disco Dave, Rockin’ Riley, Country Clay, Soulful Selma and New Wave Nigel.
Nigel looked eerily familiar. The figurine donned an orange jumpsuit, and red flowerpot hat that harked back to the famed “energy domes” rocked by Devo.
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Devo’s Gerald Casale sniffed that the energy domes were trademarked, and added, “We don’t like McDonald’s, and we don’t like American Idol, so we’re doubly offended.”
(2) Axl Greased Out By Guitar Hero
When Guitar Hero maker Activision approached Axl Rose in 2007 about using ‘Welcome To The Jungle’ for Guitar Hero III, there was one stipulation. No Slash.
Alas, petty feud or not, Slash was the guitar hero, after all. Guitar III featured him as a playable character, opponent and on the packaging.
Rose filed suit in 2011 demanding $20 million compensation. The judge said he took too long to file the case, and threw it out of court.
Activision got more legal grief from The Romantics over a cover of a song on Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks The 80s, while Courtney Love threatened to follow two years later calling as “vile” the appearance of her husband Kurt Cobain of Nirvana in Guitar Hero 5.
(3) Getting A Pizza Of Black Keys
With The Black Keys’ popularity soaring into the stratosphere, it wasn’t long before brands sussed out their music was the easiest way to get to the crazy generation.
From their seventh album El Camino (2011) Pizza Hut grabbed ‘Gold On The Ceiling’ for a new topping, and Home Depot used ‘Lonely Boy’ for an ad for power tools. Neither had sought permission for their use or responded to requests to withdraw the ads.
The Black Keys successfully asked a court to stop the ads and to compensate them for $75,000 each.
(4) Jay-Z Turns The Page
Australian author Jessica Chiha set up The Little Homie company in 2017, through which she published the children’s book A. B to Jay-Z.
The book associated letters of the alphabet with figureheads in the hip-hop scene. With lines like “I Got 99 Problems but my children learning their ABC’s ain’t one!”
Jay-Z took umbrage with the book’s “use of his name, likeness and references to ‘99 problems'” and attempted to pull the best-seller.
(5) Unleashed From The Beasties
Before Adam Yauch died in 2012 he left strict instructions in his will: no use of Beastie Boys music in ads.
Before the legendary Adam Yauch passed away in 2012, he left strict instructions in his will: no use of Beastie Boys music in advertisement. Monster Energy Drink previously found themselves in hot water for violating the rule.
A parody rendition of their 1987 track ‘Girls’, used to soundtrack US toymaker GoldieBlox’s ‘Princess Machine’ incited a legal conflama. The video, which would go on the be viewed 8 million times, saw the toy producers counter-sue the band. Claiming the parody was “fair use” and that the video subverted the Beastie Boys’ “highly sexist song” to encourage girls’ interest in science, technology and engineering.
(6) On A Chicken Wing And A Prayer
New York gospel singer Jacqueline Simpson hollered for the Lord’s legal team after she chowed down in May 2010 on a McDonald’s chicken sarnie and bit into a piece of glass. It ruined her voice, the 52-year old alleged in court documents.
It became “hoarse” and “rattly,” and she could no longer sing soprano. She also claimed people began mistaking her for a guy on the phone.
(7) I’m Hip, ‘Bro
Ernest Evans emerged in the 1950s as Chubby Checker, a pun on the great R&B piano-pounding Fats Domino.
The Chubbster had a series of million-selling hits with songs about sweaty dances like ‘The Twist’, ‘The Pony’ and ‘The Limbo’ which he frisbeed to white middle-class folk wanting to get down dirty and funky.
It was ironic that after a career of demonstrating the twist at clubs and judging twist competitions, that he needed a hip replacement. True story.
Checker got his undies in a, yes, twist, when in 2013 he discovered an app which calculated the size of someone’s dick based on data fed on their foot size, was called The Chubby Checker.
A lawyer’s letter was duly hurled towards Hewlett-Packard and Palm saying the app caused “irreparable damage and harm” to his name, which was now associated with “obscene sexual connotation and images”. He wanted $500,000, ta.
The app was pulled, a generation of anxious schoolboys went back to measuring their fellers with time-honoured wooden rulers, and Chubby went on to become more famous as the father of women’s basketballer Mistie Bass.
(8) Slipknot Get Into A Beef
In 2005, Burger King in the US began using a fictional masked rock band called Coq Roq in their chicken fry ads.
Slipknot threatened to sue for using a “look-alike, sound-alike ‘band’ in order to influence the Slipknot generation to purchase chicken fries”.
The band (the real one) noted the ads “in addition to capturing the flavour and high energy intensity of a Slipknot performance, the members of Coq Roq wear masks that include a gas mask as worn by Slipknot’s Sid Wilson, a kabuki style mask as worn by Slipknot’s Joey Jordison and a mask with dreads as worn by Slipknot’s Corey Taylor.”
Burger King’s response was that the Coq Roq masks were supposed to resemble chickens. The chain countersued arguing that Slipknot themselves were a parody of other masked bands as KISS, Gwar, Insane Clown Posse, Mushroomhead and Mudvayne.
Both sides dropped legal action and the Coq Roq campaign continued.
(9) Insane Clown Posse March On FBI
Yes, the FBI aren’t technically a “brand” (though if you can buy a shirt emblazoned with the logo of anything from Urban Outfitters, the lines tend to get a little blurred.) In 2011, the FBI classified Insane Clown Posse’s face-painted fans, the ‘Juggalos’, as a gang in their National Gang Threat Assessment.
The report referred to them as “a loosely-organised hybrid gang” that engages in “sporadic, disorganized, individualistic” crime such as, “simple assault, personal drug use and possession, petty theft and vandalism.”
ICP filed a lawsuit in 2014 demanding the enforcement agency remove the classification. “The idea of calling the Juggalos and Juggalettes a ‘gang’ is straight-up bullshit. We are not a gang! We are a family.”
The lawsuit stated the gang designation caused unnecessary strife for many fans as a result. These included unfair treatment by cops, denied the chance to join the army and a corporal who’d served in Iraq and Afghanistan faced fearing he’d get thrown out because of his ICP tattoos.
The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the FBI’s decision to list the Juggalos as a gang was just a comment and not a “final agency” action. Meaning it was not legally binding and therefore could not be challenged in court.
In September, ICP led their fans in a Juggalo March on Washington to protest the designation.
Violent J spoke to Rolling Stone about the march, “What would anybody do? How would anybody fight the gang label? Obviously, the FBI don’t give a fuck. They’re not gonna cave in as they see it.
“All we can do is hopefully reach the people of the country. How are we gonna legally, peacefully, reach these people? The way it’s always been, is you do a March on Washington that makes as much noise as you can.”
Around the corner, the murder of George Floyd and the resurgence of BLM lay waiting.
(10) Red White & Black Stripes
Eddie Van Halen took action against Nike in 2009 maintaining that the red, white and black striped colour scheme of their new Dunk Low trainers were the same as the one on his Frankenstrat guitar from eight years before. He wanted compensation and all the trainers destroyed.
Nike responded: the designs ain’t “substantially similar”, sport, nor have we mentioned your name anywhere. Part of Ed’s prickliness was due to the fact he’d launched his own footwear brand, EVH Shoes, that year — featuring those very colours.
(11) Hotel Californication
Unless you’re David Bowie, who famously trademarked ‘Ziggy Stardust’, most artist’s don’t go through the bother of registering a song name because of the expense.
In 2007, Showtime announced Californication — the David Duchovny-led series that honed in on the seedy underground of Los Angeles. Red Hot Chili Peppers took umbrage with the name of the series, and requested they change it claiming it caused “confusion” with their 1999 comeback album of the same name.
The show’s producer Tom Kapinos claimed he’d first come across the name on bumper stickers in the state of Oregon, ‘Don’t californicate Oregon’ protesting about Californians moving there in droves. “I just thought it was a great, great title for the show,” he said.
The show ran for seven seasons with the name.
It is rumoured the band settled but only “won” because the show featured a secretary named Dani California (a RHCP song on their 2006 album) and had a character whose name had also been used in a number of RHCP songs.
(12) Kid Rock Runs Away To Circus
Kid Rock found himself in a legal cafuffle after naming his US tour, The Greatest Show On Earth, drawn from the opening track of his album, Sweet Southern Sugar.
Rock was privy to a legal tap on the shoulder from a gent who owned that trademark for the Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Despite the circus closing in 2007, the trademark powers remained.
The Kid huffed and puffed about his constitutional rights but sulkily changed to the less ravey The American Rock N Roll Tour.
