MinnLawyer Blog

Michael Jackson’s memorial service in Los Angeles today will be attended by thousands. The pop singer’s life touched many, including a local lawyer, Marshall Tanick,  who once represented a client whom the King of Pop chose to take on. Tanick sent the following e-mail sum up of the experience:

“Back in the early 1980′s, I represented a woman who sold novelty merchandise of various sorts. She had been a buyer with one of the large retailers in town and knew the field pretty well. She came up with an idea to sell various items, t-shirts, key chains, etc., using names of then-popular (very popular) song titles of Michael Jackson: ‘Beat It!’; ‘Thriller’; ‘Billie Jean’; and the like. She started selling them at various county fairs during the summer of 1982 and was fairly successful. She had plans to do so at the State Fair as well.

“That’s where Michael intervened, or more precisely, his agents. They contacted her (and me) and maintained that she must cease and desist from any such commercial use (or face a lawsuit). They even said that Michael was deeply offended and taking a personal interest in this matter. My client’s first reaction was to welcome litigation because it might attract publicity and help boost sales of the products. For my part, the litigation would have been interesting because I looked forward to the opportunity to depose the King of Pop.

“But after a bit of legal research, I learned that song titles could not be copyrighted. Therefore, there was no basis for the cease and desist letter and I so informed Jackson’s posse. As long as she did not use his name, picture, or other likeness, she was free to do so, which I communicated to the agents.

“Basically, we told the Jackson folks to ‘Beat it!’ We did not think that they would back off, and we expected litigation, which would have been a real ‘Thriller.’ But we never heard back from them.

“Jackson did not take any further action and my client went about her merry way, selling her items at a good profit over a short period of time while Jackson was very ‘hot,’ although they faded when he did.

“I never got to meet Michael, or litigate with him, but that is my ‘Michael Moment.’”