Back in June, The Beastie Boys received a settlement of $1.7 million from Monster Energy for a lawsuit they had filed involving illegal use of their music. In their lawsuit, the boys claimed that Monster had used five of their songs without permission in a video advertisement for a snowboarding completion, ‘Ruckus In The Rockies’.
Now in response to the earlier judgement, it seems The Beastie Boys are not the only party involved in the situation that feel they deserve compensation. Two affiliates of Universal Music Group, Capitol Records and Universal-Polygram International Publishing, have now filed a lawsuit against Monster for $1.2 million over the unauthorized usage of those five tracks.
After the first verdict, Monster Energy Drink company stated,“Although Monster Energy has great respect for the verdict of the jury, we strongly disagree with it. We will make an application to the Court to set aside the verdict and we intend to file an appeal. From the inception, Monster Energy has been willing to resolve this matter in a fair and equitable manner and we will continue to make additional efforts to reach a just resolution of this dispute.”
Although Monster may not be too happy with the situation, the process for The Beastie Boys was pretty quick, and the courts did not take long to side in their favor. Given that past history, it’s appearing rather improbable that Capital Records and Universal-Polygram will lose their case against the beverage company. One thing is for certain: We definitely wouldn’t want to be in Monster’s shoes right now.
