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The lawsuit brought against WWE, Michael Hayes, WWE compser Jim Johnston and others by "Badstreet, USA" and WCW "Slamjam" theme music composer James Papa was officially settled with a court filing on 5/5.
The filing noted that the two sides resolved their issues following an Alternative Dispute Resolution conference. The news isn't surprising given that WWE Network versions of World Championship Wrestling PPVs using the "Slamjam" CD era theme songs were placed on the Network, replacing versions of the PPV that had edited out the original music.
While we don't have a confirmation on this, it's likely WWE's settlement included the company buying the rights to the WCW music. A similar lawsuit brought against the company by Harry "Slash" Grivas and Roderick Kohn over the rights to original music used by Extreme Championship Wrestling that WWE had been using was resolved with a settlement that saw WWE purchase the catalog outright.
Papa filed the lawsuit in July 2012, claiming that WWE was using the material without permission, had co-opted copyright registrations for the songs and wrongly attributed them to Johnston and had cost Papa money after former WWE videogame licensee reached out to him about the rights to "Badstreet USA" for a videogame only to drop interest and use a "clone" of the song that WWE provided instead.
Papa later filed an amended lawsuit against WWE, Hayes, Jim Johnston, WWE's Stephanie Music Publishing Inc., VE Newco LLC, the parent company of Vivendi Entertainment - which handles distribution of WWE DVD and Blu-Rays), Yukes (which designs the WWE video-games) and Take-Two Interactive, which acquired the license for the WWE video-games last year when THQ filed for bankruptcy.
In their response to the amended complaint, WWE denied any wrongdoing and claimed that since Papa had "consented to use" of his music in broadcasts of WCW and World Class Championship Wrestling material, that WWE would have the rights to use the material since they had acquired the copyrights to that material "lawfully". They also claimed the usage of the music in their World Class documentary would fall under "fair use" and claimed that Papa did not hold the copyright for the clone version that Jim Johnston created, so any claim against the song used in the videogame should be thrown out. WWE requested a jury trial in their response.
A trial date of 3/23/15 had been set.
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