sued by the majors<\/a> over its pop song featuring posts on TikTok and Instagram, it claimed – somewhat dubiously – that when social media companies started encouraging users to include music in videos under their licences, it couldn\u2019t have known the social platforms weren\u2019t addressing brands.\u00a0<\/p>\nIn its new lawsuit, Warner is keen to stress that PacSun can\u2019t plead ignorance of music licensing rules and copyright law when responding to this new litigation. \u201cPacSun is a sophisticated, successful company with access to legal resources and a familiarity with intellectual property law\u201d, the major writes.<\/p>\n
And a lot of that IP knowledge, it goes on, comes from PacSun \u201cactively enforcing its own intellectual property rights\u201d. The clothing seller\u2019s terms and conditions of its website \u201cinclude robust provisions safeguarding PacSun\u2019s intellectual property\u201d it adds, and \u201cPacSun has also used litigation to enforce its intellectual property rights against alleged infringers\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Legally speaking, claims like this one are pretty straightforward, brands need licences to include other people\u2019s music in their videos, the TikTok and Instagram licences do not cover brand content, and both platforms are pretty clear about that in their terms of service, as Warner\u2019s lawsuit points out.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Things can be slightly more ambiguous when an influencer posts a video plugging PacSun\u2019s products and featuring a pop song. The platform licences don\u2019t cover those videos either, but is the influencer or the brand liable for the copyright infringement?<\/p>\n
Elsewhere in its lawsuit, Warner is keen to stress the control PacSun exercises over the videos it pays influencers to create and upload, keen to ensure any copyright liabilities sit with the fashion firm.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That includes, it says, \u201cproviding advice and direction as to the content of the promotional videos\u201d and \u201cactively reviewing influencer-made PacSun videos and then promoting and\/or redistributing the videos by posting them on PacSun\u2019s own social media pages\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Warner wants an injunction stopping PacSun from using the major\u2019s recordings and songs in its videos, and – of course – lots of damages.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source completemusicupdate.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fashion retailer PacSun is the latest company to be sued over its use of unlicensed music in promo videos posted to TikTok and Instagram, with Warner Music filing the lawsuit.\u00a0 The clothing company\u2019s social media videos have been \u201cinstrumental to the success of PacSun\u201d, says Warner\u2019s legal filing, and yet it \u201chasn\u2019t paid to use […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2185588,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2185587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/PacSun-latest-brand-to-be-sued-over-uncleared-pop-songs.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2185587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2185587"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2185587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2185589,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2185587\/revisions\/2185589"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2185588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2185587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2185587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2185587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}