“We Built This City” (that was just to give you the earworm)

This case, out of the Northern District of California, Chaquico v. Freiberg, Case No. 17-cv-02423-MEJ, concerns a fairly common entertainment law issue that results when bands lose and gain members: who gets to still use the band name? Jefferson Starship has a fairly rocky naming history, having originally been called Jefferson Airplane and later morphing into Starship after a prior fight over the name. Because band name ownership can be a tricky thing to decide under intellectual property law, and because it might result in rulings that the band members (current and former) might not like, bands frequently try to handle these disputes by contract. Like with any contract, the efficacy of this approach differs based on the wording of the particular contract, which is what happens with the contract claims in this case: based on wording and timing and the interplay of other contracts, the court dismisses all of them but those that happened after January 2016.  

(If you’re interested in this sort of thing, Rebecca Tushnet writes up another of these cases, this one involving the band Boston.)