Activision suing people? How surprising! This time around, and rightfully so, the sued individual on the other side is none other than the infamous YouTube music critic, Anthony Fantano, also known as “the internet’s busiest nerd,” after he tried to legally charge the company for a TikTok clip.
Long story short, Activision somehow stumbled upon Anthony Fantano’s clip, in which he says “it’s enough slices,” and used it to promote their new shoes related to the Crash Bandicoot series. Just a week ago, on July 24, the giant video game publisher, mostly known for the Call of Duty games, filed a lawsuit in California against YouTuber Anthony Fantano, more commonly known by his popular channel’s name, theneedledrop. According to the company, Fantano was wrongfully “leveraging the popularity” of a clip that he originally created to make money, claiming that this was a misuse of the intellectual property law.
Activision vs. theneedledrop
Furthermore, Activision said that Anthony Fantano is forcing certain people to pay him “extortionate amounts of money” for using his clip. It seems that the company is the most prominent target of the YouTuber’s latest “scheme.” In the clip, Fantano can be heard saying, “it’s enough slices!”
The phrase was said in a TikTok post from 2021 in which Anthony Fantano is basically tired of a pizza getting divided into smaller and smaller slices. In the clip, Fantano is cool with the pizza cutting for a while until he just can’t take it anymore, after which he loses it and utters the viral words. The clip got so popular that it turned into an internet meme, and Activision jumped on the hype train by creating its own version of it in a promotional TikTok for its Crash Bandicoot shoes in June 2023, which has now been deleted, obviously.
Fantano did not like it one bit, claiming that he wasn’t associated with the shoes at all and that Activision made up a “false endorsement.” On June 27, the company received a cease-and-desist letter in which Fantano demanded a six-figure payment as settlement while also asking the publisher to stop using the clip.
In its counter-lawsuit, Activision claims that the YouTuber himself decided to upload the clip in the “Commercial Sounds” library of TikTok, which makes using it in advertisements completely fair.
Anthony Fantano Gets Counter-Sued by Activision
The company’s lawsuit, which was 33 pages long, read that TikTok was “explicit” by showing “Slices Audio” as a part of its “Commercial Sounds” section, which contains audio clips that are perfectly fine and licensed to be used commercially. Activision further continued that “thousands of TikTok videos” have used the audio clip “for years without complaint,” and all of a sudden, Fantano claims that its ad “infringed his publicity rights” and created “a false endorsement.” The publisher states that Fantano is misusing the law for financial gain.
Lawyers from Activision wrote that this is basically a “textbook example” of someone trying to misuse the law to “leverage unfair cash payments,” further stating that Fantano was quite “happy” when the “public” was using his clip. Out of nowhere, when he saw “a financial opportunity,” he randomly decided that not everyone could use it. Moreover, it was said that the law doesn’t “permit” and that the legal system “should not countenance” this “overt gamesmanship.”
As Activision tries to reimburse itself for the legal expenses it had to endure because of Fantano, it also wants a ruling that states that he shouldn’t be able to sue users for using the clip. Are you TeamActivision or TeamFantano?
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