NBA Teams Stole Copyrighted Music for Videos, Lawsuit Says (1)

More than a dozen NBA teams, including the New York Knicks and Cleveland Cavaliers, used songs in promotional videos without permission from the respective copyright owners, music publishers said in separate lawsuits.

The complaints by Kobalt Music Publishing America Inc. and others, all filed Thursday in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, accused 14 NBA teams of taking songs by artists ranging from Doja Cat to Pitbull and synchronizing the music with online videos promoting the teams’ commercial activities.

Each complaint implicates different artists’ songs, and thereby involves different copyright owners as the plaintiffs. Kobalt …