IP Law Daily, COPYRIGHT—C.D. Cal.: Pandora’s royalty policies are no joke to comedian George Lopez, (Aug 26, 2022)

By Matthew Hersh, J.D.

The Mexican-American funnyman and actor is the latest professional comic to take on the streaming service for its licensing policies

Streaming service Pandora is infringing the rights of comedians to their work by paying only for the rights to sound recordings in which their routines are embedded and not for the underlying routines themselves, a prominent Mexican-American comedian has alleged in a new federal lawsuit. The lawsuit is only the latest in a number of recent legal battles between comics and Pandora, which has pushed back by contending that it is merely following a longtime industry practice and has accused comedians of forming a “cartel” to intimidate the service (Lopez v. Pandora Media, LLC, August 23, 2022).

The lawsuit was brought by George Lopez, a well-known fixture on the comedy circuit. Lopez has released several stand-up specials including Why You Crying?; America’s Mexican; We’ll Do it For Half; Tall, Dark & Chicano; and It’s Not Me, It’s You; Alien Nation; Right Now Right Now; Team Leader; El Mas Chingon; and The Wall. Outside of his stand-up, the complaint asserts, Mr. Lopez is well known for his prime-time show, George Lopez, and its iconic use of War’s song Low Rider. (In an early review of the show, written in 2002, the New York Times noted that the show was earning solid ratings “even though the comedy is infused with what Mr. Lopez calls ‘a huge, huge layer of sadness’ and the dysfunction of what he describes as his ‘'emotionally abusive’ childhood.”).

In the lawsuit, Lopez alleges that “there are two copyrights involved in the recorded performance of a literary copyrighted work: a copyright in the sound recording, and a separate copyright in the underlying spoken word composition.” Pandora, Lopez alleges, has made nearly 40 of his comedy routines available for dissemination to the public via their digital broadcast radio service without obtaining a license from him for those routines. Instead, Lopez contends, Pandora obtains only a license for the sound recording in which the routine is embedded. Pandora, for its part, is open about this practice, as it has acknowledged in SEC filings as early as 2011.

The lawsuit is only the latest in a number of lawsuits that comedians have brought against Pandora in recent months, including lawsuits by the estates of George Carlin and Robin Williams as well as comics Lewis Black and Andrew Dice Clay. Many of those claims have been consolidated in the Los Angeles court (raising the possibility that this claim, too, will be consolidated). In a widely circulated counterclaim in that consolidated action, Pandora argued that it was a long-standing custom and practice to obtain a license only for the sound recordings of comedy routines, noting that “no comedian has ever licensed separately or collected a separate and additional royalty for the public performance, reproduction, or distribution of the underlying jokes embodied in any of these comedy recordings.” Pandora also accuses Word Collections, an organization formed to license the literary works of comedians, of operating a “licensing cartel” that, in its view, would bring the worst of the “broken music licensing marketplace” to comedy licensing.

The lawsuit, filed this week in the federal district court for Los Angeles, seeks actual damages, and accounting of Pandora’s profits, statutory damages, attorney fees, and a “running royalty” or, in the alternative, injunctive relief.

The case is No. 2:22-cv-05965-JFW-RAO.

Attorneys: Richard S. Busch (King & Ballow) for George Lopez.

Companies: Pandora Media, LLC

Cases: Copyright CaliforniaNews