Robin Williams, George Carlin Estates Sue Pandora Over Copyrighted Jokes

The estates of Robin Williams and George Carlin sued Sirius XM’s Pandora Media Inc on Monday, claiming the online music service owes royalties for streaming their material millions of times.

Williams and Carlin’s estates, along with comedians Bill Engvall, Ron White and Andrew Dice Clay, have not received a “fraction of a penny” from Pandora, they said in five separate federal lawsuits filed in Los Angeles by the same attorney.

The lawsuits ask for damages ranging from over $4 million for Williams’ estate to nearly $13 million for White.

Carlin and Williams were two of the most popular comedians of all time. Carlin died in 2008 and Williams in 2014. Engvall and White are best known for their performances on the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, while Clay was a major act in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The lawsuits say Pandora’s licenses to the comedians’ recordings do not include their underlying jokes. While companies like Pandora often negotiate licenses to music rights with performing-rights organizations like the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, these groups don’t license literary works like spoken-word comedy, the comedians said.