Pandora Lodges More Antitrust Claims in Comedy Licensing Row

Pandora Media LLC filed a new set of antitrust counterclaims against comedian Lewis Black and the royalty administration company Spoken Giants in an ongoing legal battle over whether the streaming service failed to obtain licenses for its comedy content.

Pandora alleged that Spoken Giants, formed in 2020 as one of the first performance rights organizations to represent comedians, has consolidated the market for comedy licensing “into a monopolistic portfolio.”

Spoken Giants’ efforts to collectively license the rights to the underlying jokes embodied in a comedy recording has eliminated “a free competitive market, in which the rights owners would compete against ...