Apple sued for copyright infringement in the US
The plaintiff (Charming Beats LLC) is the exclusive owner of the copyrighted recording composition ‘Anything You Synthesize.’ The defendant APPLE advertised its Apple music streaming service with an unlicensed reproduction of an infringing derivative of the plaintiff’s copyrighted track (the infringing advertisement).
It is pertinent to note that APPLE owns and operates the Apple Music streaming service entirely. For a monthly subscription fee, the users of Apple Music can select music to stream to their device on-demand or listen to the existing, curated playlists.
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APPLE distributed the infringing advertisements to various websites without a license or authority despite two DMCA Take-down notices. The matter involves an infringing derivative of the Copyrighted track titled ‘Caramelo,’ which consists of a musical component which is an unlicensed reproduction of the plaintiff’s copyrighted track and lyrics performed by the famous French rapper’ Ninho.’
The ‘Genius Media’ owned by the defendant Media Labs provides the lyrics of millions of songs. There is a deal between APPLE and Media Labs, which allows APPLE to place lyrics of songs on their website in return for a substantial fee and a reproduction of the actual music associated with the lyrics.
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APPLE used the copyrighted track to entice the 169,000 viewers of the lyrics to the subject infringing song to join their Apple Music subscription service through a permanent advertisement at the bottom of the webpage. The viewers could get only the first 30 seconds of the song as the rest would be available upon taking a subscription. After joining the Apple music streaming service, the plaintiff found out that the song was not available on the platform, a deliberate attempt of APPLE to falsely advertise and mislead users into joining the service.
The plaintiff has served the defendants the opportunity to remove the infringing advertisement through DMCA take-down notices. They refused to comply and continued to continue the infringing activity through the ad. The plaintiff suffered a huge loss owing to the infringing activity of the plaintiff as its association with the infringing derivative devalued the copyrighted track.
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Charming Beats LLC v/s Apple, INC and MediaLab AI INC Case No. 21-cv-6444
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