The Beastie Boys are suing Brinker International, the company that owns Chili’s Grill and Bar, alleging that the restaurant chain used their 1994 hit “Sabotage” in a social media advert that also parodied the song’s famous Spike Jonze -directed video. The lawsuit was filed in New York on Wednesday (July 10), on behalf of Adam Horovitz ‘Ad Rock’, Mike ‘Mike D’ Diamond and the estate of Adam ‘MCA’ Yauch, who died in 2012 . In the complaint, seen by The Independent , the Beastie Boys’s lawyers argue that Brinker “produced, sponsored, and encouraged the creation and posting on social media of videos to promote Brinker’s ‘Chili’s’ restaurants that included musical compositions and sound recordings that were used without the permission of the rights owners.
” One such video used the song “Sabotage” and featured “three characters wearing obvious 70s-style wigs, fake mustaches, and sunglasses who were intended to evoke the three members of Beastie Boys performed scenes depicting them ‘robbing’ ingredients from a Chili’s restaurant.” The band argue that the video was clearly meant to evoke the popular “Sabotage” video, and falsely implied that they endorse the restaurant chain. As the suit makes clear, the use of “Sabotage” was unauthorized, as the band “do not license ‘Sabotage’ or any of their other intellectual property for third-party product advertising purposes, and deceased Beastie Boys member Adam Yauch included a pr.
