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Brands & Merch Business News Legal
John Butler Trio win yoghurt dispute
By CMU Editorial | Published on Tuesday 22 May 2012
Australian band The John Butler Trio have won a legal battle with a US advertising agency, Poptent. The band sued after the company sampled their 2003 song ‘Zebra’ for an advert for Dannon Oikos Greek yoghurt, which first aired on American TV during the Super Bowl in February.
Poptent has now been forced to remove the sample from the advert, though it’s not clear what, if any, financial reparation is due for plays of the advert up to this point.
A spokesperson for the band said: “The advertisement will no longer contain this particular piece of music and both parties are happy this issue is behind them. We thank all JBT fans worldwide for their support on this matter. No further comment will be entered into”.
The ruling comes after Beach House spoke out against a new VW advert which uses a piece of music apparently written to sound very similar to their 2010 song ‘Take Care’, after they refused to allow the original to be used itself. News of the copycat track came, much to their dismay, just as the band were releasing their new album, ‘Bloom’. Hence, when commenting on it last week, they said: “We will release a proper statement weeks fom now when we don’t have more interesting things to do/talk about”.
It’s not clear at this stage if Beach House plan to launch legal action, but it would be an interesting case if they did.
