Miami Heat Among 14 Teams Being Sued For Alleged Musical Copyright Violations

According to 14 individual complaints filed in the United States District Court in Manhattan, NBA teams, including the Miami Heat, allegedly used copyrighted music in promotional videos on social media platforms without expressed written permission.

Jun 15, 2014; San Antonio, TX, USA; Miami Heat owner Micky Arison on the couty before game five of the 2014 NBA Finals against the San Antonio Spurs at AT&T Center. Mandatory Credit: Bob Donnan-USA TODAY Sports / Bob Donnan-USA TODAY Sports

The Miami Heat are one of 14 NBA teams being sued for alleged copyright violations.

They are accused of using music in promotional videos on social media without written consent of the publishers, the artists or their representatives. The Heat are alleged to have misappropriated the copyrights belonging to artists such as Ariana Grande and Flo Rida.

The individual lawsuits against each of the franchises have been filed on Thursday in the United States District Court in Manhattan.

"The Plaintiffs are in the business of receiving licensing fees for uses of their intellectual property via reproduction, distribution and/or public performance."

According to Law 360 the lead Plaintiff is Kobalt Music Publishing America, Inc. The complaints allege "each franchise has made promotional videos set to copyrighted music to post on YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and the social platform X."

Kobalt is the exclusive licensing agent for each of the Plaintiffs in the suits. They notified certain music companies within the last three years of the alleged copyright infringements of the teams. The complaints are near mirror images in all 14 cases.

The only real differences are the listed on the exhibit to each complaint which list the specific works which were alleged to have been infringed and the artists whose works were used in violation of the Copyright Act.

The lawsuit filed against the Heat has three main causes of action. Those causes of action are Direct Copyright Infringement, Contributory Copyright Infringement and Vicarious Copyright Infringement.

Vicarious copyright infringement means the Heat allegedly acted in concert with other defendants to commit the violation. There are no other defendants in the Heat lawsuit yet, but the complaint names Does 1-10, which means additional defendants are subject to being added later upon discovery of who allegedly participated in the infringement.

A jury trial was demanded in the complaint.

The Heat have not issued any statements regarding the litigation.

Scott Salomon is a contributor to Miami Heat On SI. He can be reached at sas@southfloridamedianetwork.com.

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