Highlights
- Activision is suing TikTok star TheNeedleTok over a pizza meme used in an ad without his permission, following a previous lawsuit against the gaming giant.
- The popular content creator gained fame through his YouTube channel and TikTok account, and his viral video was repurposed by Activision in an ad for Crash Bandicoot sneakers.
- Activision argues that the creator made the meme freely accessible, so users should not have to compensate him, and they want him to reimburse their legal fees. The case may become irrelevant due to the push to ban TikTok.
Activision is suing TikTok star Anthony "TheNeedleTok" Fatano over a pizza meme of his that the company attempted to incorporate into one of its ads without the creator's approval. This development arrives mere months after the gaming giant last found itself on the receiving end of a lawsuit, with the US government suing Activision Blizzard back in April.
TikTok spawned a plethora of online trends and memes since the social media app debuted in September 2016, giving rise to many new Internet celebrities, while also elevating some established content creators. The latter category also includes Fatano, who's been running a popular YouTube channel called The Needle Drop since 2009. His entertaining music critique videos earned him over 2.76 million YouTube subscribers to date, whereas his TikTok account currently boasts some 1.3 million followers. Fatano mostly uses TikTok for posting short-form variety content, such as a video of him narrating the act of excessive pizza slicing which went viral on the platform in April 2021.
The audio from the clip, which amassed over 5.7 million likes to date, was later repurposed by Activision in an ad for a pair of Crash Bandicoot sneakers. Fatano demanded compensation for the publisher's appropriation, citing a figure that Activision labeled "extortionate." While the company promptly pulled its TikTok ad, it also decided to challenge the very notion that repurposing all TikTok content requires compensating its original creators. As first reported by Billboard, Activision hence filed a lawsuit against Fatano with a federal court date set in California for July 24.
A key part of Activision's legal argument against the famous music critic revolves around the fact that he deliberately added his pizza-slicing commentary to the TikTok audio library, thus making it freely accessible to users. As a result, no one who chooses to use that particular soundbite should be required to compensate Fatano, Activision argued. Apart from demanding a ruling stating that the content creator cannot sue users for repurposing the meme, the Call of Duty maker also wants Fatano to reimburse its legal bills stemming from the case.
Activision alleges that Fatano was emboldened by the fact that he successfully strong-armed some other entities into "unjustified" settlement payouts over their own use of the pizza soundbite. Should the complaint actually reach a courtroom, which not many cases do, there's a chance for it to become irrelevant before yielding a verdict, not least because of the ongoing bipartisan push to ban TikTok across the United States.
The Chinese social media app has so far proven to be a fairly lucrative platform for many content creators. This was most recently illustrated by the absurd amounts of money some TikTok stars earned with bizarre NPC livestreams.
Source: Billboard