Toy company drops lawsuit over Beastie Boys ‘Girls’ parody
SAN FRANCISCO — A Northern California toy company says it has removed its parody of a popular Beastie Boys song from a promotional video that went viral.
GoldieBlox founder Debbie Sterling posted an open letter to the band’s surviving members Wednesday saying the company also plans to withdraw a lawsuit it filed for the right to spoof the song “Girls.”
The company filed the lawsuit last week, saying the Beastie Boys threatened their own legal action for copyright infringement.
Sterling says she didn’t know the Beastie Boys have a blanket ban on using their songs in advertisements.
GoldieBlox makes engineering toys for girls and tweaked the lyrics of “Girls” to talk about spaceships and software.
The video had spread across the Internet in recent weeks, with more than 8 million views on YouTube.