Beastie Boys Sue Monster Energy Drink
Monster Energy Drink has been very busy on the advertising trail pushing out videos, commercials, clips and whatnot all containing clips from Beastie Boys music and even insinuataing their likeness. The videos make it look as if the Beastie Boys acknowledged and approved the Monster media blitz. They didn’t.
The Beastie Boys and the estate of Adam Yauch are now suing Monster for $150,000 for each occurrence and there are a lot. In one long 26 minute video there is a “mega mix” by DJ Z-Trip that featured songs So Whatcha Want, Looking Down The Barrel Of A Gun, Paul Revere, Make Some Noise, Sabotage and others. A total of 26 others. That one video, which went up a mere 5 days after Adam Yauch‘s death, would cost them almost 4 million if the Beasties win their case.
To make matters worse for Monster, Adam Yauch was very specific in his will that he did not want his likeness or his artwork to be used in any advertising at all. You can probably imagine that if this goes to court in New York, that will most definitely be brought up.
Monster Energy will almost certainly allege that they were paying homage to the Beastie Boys, because we find it hard to believe that a company as big as Monster would make such a huge rookie mistake. We’ll see what happens.
