Pandora’s Antitrust Countersuit Against Comedians Tossed By Judge

For the second time, a California federal judge has rejected Pandora’s countersuit allegations that comedians were illegally teaming up to reach a more lucrative royalty deal with the digital streaming service in violation of antitrust law.

The antitrust issues were part of a counterclaim brought by Pandora in its defense against copyright infringement claims from several living and late comedians or their companies, estates and families, including George Carlin, Robin Williams, Nick Di Paolo, Lewis Black, Bill Engvall, Ron White, Bill Hicks and Andrew Dice Clay.

Those comedians filed a copyright infringement suit against Pandora in February 2022, claiming the digital service is only paying royalties on the comedians’ recordings, but not the underlying literary works that fueled the recordings — i.e., the jokes.

But Pandora filed a countersuit that May, naming the comedians and two organizations that license and collect royalties on behalf of comedians — Word Collections and Spoken Giants — as defendants. The countersuit said the defendants collectively represented a monopoly that was conspiring for higher royalty payments.

At the end of October, Judge Mark Scarsi rejected Pandora’s antitrust arguments but left the digital music service provider the ability to amend the complaint, which it did. Scarsi, for the second time, on Wednesday (April 5), rejected the amended antitrust arguments in their entirety and this time blocked further amendments, leaving the proceedings to center on the original copyright infringement claims.

On the other hand, Scarsi ruled that Spoken Giants and Word Collections did not make a persuasive case that sanctions are warranted against Pandora, concluding that Pandora had standing to bring its amended counterclaims and did so in a “good faith, if ultimately meritless, basis for the filing. So [the defendants’] motion for sanctions against Pandora are denied,” Scarsi concluded.

In response to Scarsi’s order dismissing Pandora’s counterclaims, Richard Busch, who represented the comedians as plaintiffs in the original infringement lawsuit and as defendants in Pandora’s counterclaim suit, issued a statement. 

“These legendary comedians filed legitimate copyright infringement claims. Rather than defend against them on the merits, Pandora and its lawyers decided to file antitrust claims that we believe were clearly meant to intimidate my clients and their families, and put Word Collections out of business,” said Busch. “It didn’t work. Even when the judge dismissed Pandora’s claims the first time and told them that he was skeptical that they could plead valid claims, they were undeterred and brazenly pressed forward with a new complaint that we believed was just as bad if not worse than the first one. The court has now agreed, and has rightfully dismissed Pandora’s claims, again, this time with prejudice and specifically and explicitly without any right to try again. We now look forward to pursuing the infringement claims as should have been the case from the beginning.”

Pandora parent company SiriusXM did not respond to an email request for comment.