On! On! U of Lawsuit!

Lost in the excitement of the past few weeks -- I share your excitement about those Washington Wizards uniforms! -- was the news that Papa John's is being sued for using the "On! On! U of K" fight song in a commercial.

In the lawsuit filed in New York, Bro 'N Sis Music claims that Papa John's did not pay the appropriate licensing fees for the commercial use of "On! On! U of K". In a statement to the H-L, Papa John's claims that it was given permission to use the fight song by IMG, the sports marketing company who manages multimedia rights for UK. Currently UK and IMG are not listed as defendants in the lawsuit.

The copyright of the fight song is claimed to be held by Bro 'N Sis Music. Carlin America operates Bro 'N Sis Music as an imprint and enforces the copyright to its music. I contacted Carlin America last week, requesting a list of other university fight song copyrights it claims to own. They politely declined my request. We shall never know if they own the copyright to "This is Indiana" or to the girl in the video wearing white shorts.

From my research, I found a similar case when the copyright holder for the UNLV Fight Song sued Electronic Arts for using the song in EA collegiate video games. That lawsuit was dismissed two years ago in EA's favor. The court ruled that the song copyright holder, Gerald Willis, could amend the lawsuit to include UNLV; Willis instead dismissed his lawsuit outright.

The UNLV case may not be relevant to this case involving Coach Cal's second-favorite Twitter sponsor -- orange you glad you know the first-favorite? The licensed use of "On! On! U of K" hasn't been an issue before with UK and its corporate sponsors. We've all heard it in regional and national commercials in the past. Maybe Bro 'N Sis is going to go Krogering next.

I am not a lawyer, but I doubt seriously the copyright extends to use of the fight song during games. Which means YOU PEOPLE HAVE NO EXCUSE NOT TO SING THE FIGHT SONG WHEN THE BAND SINGS!

Besides, you can't really sing with "BONER!" (Scroll down to UK song section to hear BONER! for yourself.)

 

If you follow Fake Gimel on Twitter and like his Facebook Page, he'll cry "wee wee wee!" all the way home.