We're Not Here To Start No Trouble, We're Just Here To Protect Our Likenesses From Unlawful Use

By Chuck Sudo in News on Feb 3, 2014 9:40PM

Six members of the 1985 Super Bowl Champion Chicago Bears filed a lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court last Friday against the current owners of the copyright to the song “The Super Bowl Shuffle,” arguing that the rights to their individual likenesses didn’t transfer when the song and video were purchased and to limit the rights of the owners copyright to make money off the song and video for “charitable purposes.”

Richard Dent, Otis Wilson, Jim McMahon, Mike Richardson, Steve Fuller and Willie Gault claim the song and accompanying video was produced to capitalize on the raging popularity of the team and raise money for charity and that the current owners of the song and video “do not have permission to commercially exploit their identities, images, names, likenesses, voices and performances from the Super Bowl Shuffle and that the defendants have misappropriated same for their own benefit.” (The late Walter Payton raps in the song “We’re not doing this because we’re greedy. The Bears are doin’ it to feed the needy.”) Walid J. Tamari of law firm Tamari Law Group LLC filed a royalty claim along with the complaint and asks for a trust to be formed “for charitable purposes that they select in order to continue the Super Bowl Shuffle’s charitable objective.”

The issue here is whether that royalty agreement is still valid now that the copyright to “The Super Bowl Shuffle” is owned by a third party and not the original owner. Forbes writes, “(t)he plaintiffs claim that the purported assignment required majority consent among the Shufflin’ Crew, which the producer never received.”

Read the full complaint here.