Saying 'Dope!' Does Not Provide A Legally Cognizable License To Ill

Beastie Boys sabotage Monster Energy's defense in intellectual property suit.

It would take an heroic effort of explication to derive such a conclusion from their words and informal email exchanges. And to read Phillips’s or Z-Trip’s words to convey a contract to cede Monster such rights would flout common sense. Phillips, a former forestry and ski-industry worker with no evident legal expertise, never raised any such questions with Z-Trip, or reflected any awareness of the copyright interests that Monster would need to acquire or license to bring the promotional Video it contemplated into compliance with copyright law.

Judge Paul A. Engelmayer, ripping a claim by Monster Energy that it received a license to advertise with a mashup of Beastie Boys songs because the D.J. who created the mashup said “Dope!” As Spin magazine puts it, Monster’s argument was that the aforementioned word “could function as some sort of license-giving, legally binding term. Really.”

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