Pizza Hut and Home Depot have denied that they produced adverts that used songs by The Black Keys without their permission.
In June of this year, Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney, as well as producer Danger Mouse, submitted a lawsuit alleging that Pizza Hut and its advertising agency used “significant portions” of ‘Gold On The Ceiling’ in an ad for Cheesy Bites Pizza while Home Depot used the track ‘Lonely Boy’ in an advert for power tools.
According to Entertainment Weekly, however, both companies separately denied the allegations in court documents filed last week in Los Angeles, and have both asked a judge to have the band pay their attorneys’ legal fees if they win the case.
Previously, The Black Keys’ lawyers described the use of the songs “a brazen and improper effort to capitalise on [the] plaintiffs’ hard-earned success” and claimed that they sent letters to both companies last in May asking them to stop showing the commercials.
The Black Keys released their seventh studio album, ‘El Camino’, in December last year. In June, the band revealed they were set to go into the studio this year to begin work on a follow-up, although hinted that a new LP was unlikely to be released until 2013.
The band are also set to release their own documentary. Noah Abrams, the director behind the yet-untitled film, has said he had no plans to shoot a straight band documentary and revealed that the movie is a “buddy movie with perhaps the greatest soundtrack of all time”.
The Black Keys will be playing this month’s Reading and Leeds Festivals. You can watch the video for their recent single ‘Gold On The Ceiling’ by scrolling down to the bottom of the page and clicking.
Picture credit: John Peets/Press