Sony Settles Rosa Parks’ Lawsuit

Sony BMG and Rosa Parks, who became a symbol for the U.S. civil rights movement when she refused to yield her seat on a segregated bus in 1955, settled her lawsuit over the use of her name in an OutKast song title, her lawyer said Thursday.

The settlement included an agreement that a tribute CD featuring OutKast would be produced later this year by Sony BMG, the world’s second-largest music company, to honor the 50th anniversary of Parks’ arrest, her lawyer, Dennis Archer, said in a statement. The parties will also produce a television broadcast tribute to Parks, he said.

Parks, 92, had claimed that the song “Rosa Parks” on a 1998 OutKast album amounted to false advertising under U.S. trademark law and intruded on her rights. OutKast and then-Bertelsmann’s Arista Records countered that the title was constitutionally protected speech because it was related to the song’s lyric of “everybody move to the back of the bus.”

The Supreme Court in December 2003 rejected Arista’s argument and let stand a federal appeals court decision that permitted Parks to pursue her lawsuit.

Sonia Muckle, a spokeswoman for Sony’s New York-based Jive records, declined to comment.