Marissa Abruzzini September 5th, 2014 - 6:56 PM
The producer takes to Twitter bashing the major corporation’s use of his song without his permission. See his new tweets and what he has to say about Disney’s threats over his logo.
Photo Credit: Pamela Lin
As you might have heard, yesterday Disney threatened electronic producer Deadmau5 (aka Joel Zimmerman) with a lawsuit alleging that his mouse head costume looks too much like a certain famous mouse that made Disney a mint.
In an ironic twist of events, Zimmerman took to his social media accounts alleging that Disney is actually the one stealing from him. He says the corporation used one of his songs, “Ghosts ‘n’ Stuff,” in a video collage of Mickey Mouse clips.
Zimmerman says he never gave the Walt Disney Company permission to use the track in their video, and that the company is using it illegally. Zimmerman owns the copyright to the song and is threatening legal action against the company.
Bad blood between Zimmerman and Disney isn’t anything new. Their legal dispute began in March of this year when Zimmerman tried to get his signature headpiece (which he calls Mau5head) trademarked. The company officially filed a complaint this month, stating that the headpiece bears too much resemblance to their Mickey Mouse logo. Disney argued that this will cause confusion for consumers who might mistake Zimmerman’s logo for Disney, thus losing Disney plenty of cash.
Zimmerman is now fighting back. One of his recent tweets said:
lets test a theory, it takes em 10 years to oppose a trademark, lets see how long it takes em to take down a video.
— deadmau5 (@deadmau5) September 4, 2014
Zimmerman says he’s ready to defend his trademark. He owns a trademark on his infamous mouse ears in 30 countries. It’s an uphill battle for Disney to block his trademark application now that he’s been using it since the dawn of his career and already owns it in other countries. Today’s tweets are yet another hurdle thrown at Disney’s fight to take Deadmau5 down. Zimmerman alleges his fans were confused when they saw Disney’s use of his song in one of their videos:
So now, @disney is illegally using my work… and CONFUSING people that id actualyly work with these twats. — deadmau5 (@deadmau5) September 4, 2014
As of yet, Disney has not officially responded to the allegations and has not retracted their lawsuit against Zimmerman’s copyright.
UPDATE
Disney responded to Zimmerman’s allegations with the following statement:
The music was appropriately licensed, and there is no merit to his statement. Disney vigorously protects its trademark rights, and we oppose Mr. Zimmerman’s attempt to register a logo that is nearly identical to our trademarks for his commercial exploitation. Our opposition is not about the use of the Deadmau5 costume.
Listen to Zimmerman’s song on Disney’s Mickey Mouse “Re-Micks” clip:
