Eminem’s music company Eight Mile Style has sued Facebook’s parent company Meta for $109 million, it is reported.
The 52-year-old rapper’s publishing company has filed a lawsuit over alleged copyright infringement to the tune of $109million (£80.6m), arguing Meta Platforms violated the copyright of 243 of his songs.
The filling, obtained by E! News and made by Eminem’s music company Eight Mile Style, alleged Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, published a range of tools that ‘allow and encourage its users to steal’ Eminem’s recordings to use in video content ‘without proper attribution or license’.
The lawsuit also accused Meta Platforms of not only ‘rampant infringement’ of Eight Mile Compositions, but also of ‘knowing infringement’, according to reports.
Specifically, the lawsuit cited Meta’s Original Audio and Reels services, which it argued knowingly facilitated the ‘unauthorized storage, reproduction and exploitation’ of Eminem’s original music.
Subsequently, Eminem – real name Marshall Mathers – sought to recoup monetary losses driven by ‘the diminished value of the copyrights by Defendants’ theft of them, lost profits, and Defendants’ profits attributable to the infringement’.
If that value could not be agreed on, the lawsuit requested Eminem receive the maximum statutory damages: $150,000 (£111,000) for each of the 243 songs across all three of Meta’s platforms, totalling more than $100 million.
This comes as Eminem celebrated 25 years since his third studio album The Marshall Mathers LP, which was released on May 23, 2000, after his debut Infinite in 1996, and The Slim Shady LP in 1999.
Since then, the rapper has sold over 100million albums worldwide, and is still making music, with his latest album The Death of Slim Shady, which dropped in July last year.
While the album landed to mixed reviews, it saw the Lose Yourself hitmaker earn his 11th number one album, joining the likes of Taylor Swift, U2, and David Bowie.
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Through his single Temporary, Eminem announced he was going to be a grandfather.
The music video, released in October, showed him holding up his daughter Hailie’s baby scan photo, looking chuffed.
The emotional song took the form of a message for his daughter to help her grieve when he is gone.
Born in Missouri, Eminem has three half-siblings called Michael, Sarah, and Nate and he lived with his mother Debbie as they moved to a number of different cities before eventually settling in Detroit, Michigan.
At the age of 15, the musician met his ex-wife Kimberley Anne Scott in high school. They started a relationship and welcomed daughter Hailie together in 1995.
Metro has contacted Meta for comment.
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