NBA Teams Fire Back Against Publishers’ Infringement Claims, Accuse Kobalt, Prescription Songs, and More of Copyright Misuse

The Minnesota Timberwolves warm up before a game. Photo Credit: Bobak Ha’Eri

NBA teams including the Minnesota Timberwolves are firing back against the copyright infringement actions they’re facing from music publishers.The Timberwolves are among the more than dozen NBA teams grappling with the substantially similar suits, which were filed separately in July but, for the time being, remain unconsolidated. Now, in keeping with the cases’ overlap, teams are submitting largely matching answers.

We’ve covered the relatively straightforward cases from the get-go. Just to recap, though, plaintiffs including Kobalt Music and Prescription Songs say the defendants infringed their works by using unlicensed music in various social media videos as well as clips uploaded to NBA.com.

As a growing list of companies are finding out – or being reminded – via litigation, social media platforms’ pre-cleared song libraries are generally licensed for personal as opposed to professional use. There’s also another layer of complexity (at least for companies and professionals situated outside the industry) given how quickly usage rules and infringement responses can change on social services.

Individuals who upload videos featuring unauthorized music and pertaining to sports teams, for instance, won’t be (or haven’t been) chased down by the appropriate rightsholders. But it’s evidently a different “ballgame” when teams themselves are uploading allegedly infringing media.

In any event, the Timberwolves’ answer doesn’t touch on this complexity or the broader subject of potential licensing pitfalls on social media.Instead, the legal text includes a comprehensive point-by-point refutation of the original complaint’s allegations – as well as a number of affirmative defenses to boot. Perhaps most interestingly, the claims are allegedly barred because the plaintiffs “engaged in copyright misuse.”

Here, that refers to the publishers’ allegedly leveraging “their copyright registrations along with threats of attorneys’ fees in order to extort from the Team disproportionate payments for allegedly infringing uses.”

Next, the Timberwolves say they “possessed an implied license” to exploit the allegedly infringed works, maintain that doing so constituted fair use, and further believe that the First Amendment protected the alleged usages, to name a few defenses.

Lastly, echoing arguments made in different copyright suits, the defendants claim that the infringement allegations are time barred owing to the approximate date on which the plaintiffs knew about or should have known about the usages at hand.

Unsurprisingly, teams are leaning into social media content as the NBA season kicks off today – but in their latest video uploads, the Timberwolves look to have incorporated lesser-known releases unaffiliated with the plaintiff publishers.