Associated Production Music

A Hershey Bears game. Photo Credit: Phillyfan0419

About three months after levying a copyright infringement complaint against the American Hockey League (AHL) and a number of its teams, Associated Production Music (APM) has moved to settle with multiple defendants.

The appropriate parties just recently informed the court of their “confidential settlement” agreements, though litigation is ongoing between Associated Production Music and the other defendants.

As we reported at the time of the suit’s September filing, those defendants include the companies behind AHL teams like the Ontario Reign and the Tucson Roadrunners, to name a couple.

In short, the defendant teams allegedly used Associated Production Music recordings in a multitude of social media promo videos without permission; communications between the plaintiff and the AHL, which was allegedly contacted “repeatedly,” evidently failed to bring about a resolution.

Once again in the interest of brevity, as many companies are finding out via litigation, social platforms’ song libraries are pre-cleared only for personal, not commercial, use. In general, brands (and their paid influencers) must obtain licenses for the use of compositions and recordings.

Running with the important point, APM has fired off several such infringement complaints on the year, including a September action targeting Johnson & Johnson’s alleged copyright violations on social services.

Meanwhile, different plaintiffs are seeking relief for the same type of alleged infringement. But as things stand, it appears that APM is ceasing litigating against two defendants.

The first of these defendants is Capital Sports & Entertainment, which, per the initial suit, owns and operates the AHL’s Belleville Senators. (Belleville Senators Inc., not Capital Sports, is the defendant’s proper name, according to the company.) And the second is Hershey Entertainment & Resorts, the owner of (besides Hersheypark and a whole lot else) the Hershey Bears.

Capital and APM submitted a settlement notice on the 6th, and Hershey as well as APM filed a settlement notice of their own on the 11th. The agreements’ terms are confidential, with both notices providing little detail.

However, the court went ahead and rejected a request from Capital and APM to pause the former’s pending dismissal deadlines (Capital/the Senators had already moved to toss the suit) for 45 days.

And as spelled out by the presiding judge, notice of settlement or not, APM had until today to “file its opposition, if any” to the dismissal push; at the time of writing, the docket hadn’t been updated with a related filing.

When it comes to APM and Hershey, an order yesterday reiterated that the parties “are not relieved of any deadlines or Court appearances until a dismissal of the action is filed.”

Although those partial dismissals are presumably forthcoming, a near-term settlement between the American Hockey League and Associated Production Music doesn’t seem to be in the cards.

The defendant responded to the suit with a testy answer earlier in December, communicating in more words the belief that it hadn’t been legally required to obtain licenses for the usages in question.

“But AHL denies that it infringed any of Plaintiff’s purported copyright interests,” the league wrote, “denies that it was required to obtain a license from Plaintiff for any work alleged in the Complaint, and denies that it engaged in any wrongdoing.”

Separately, and as previously mentioned, the AHL isn’t alone in facing copyright litigation alleging infringement on social media. Plaintiffs including Universal Music, Sony Music, and Kobalt have initiated similar suits in 2024 against an array of NBA teams, Marriott, and the parent company of Chili’s.