The Beastie Boys are suing Chili’s, as one does

In a development that has, tragically, caused even the most stolid of local TV news anchors to resort to ill-advised License To Ill puns, it’s being reported that the Beastie Boys are suing Chili’s. (Or, technically, Brinker International, the chain’s parent company, which is a fun little reminder that every dead-mall chain restaurant with shit on its walls that tries to sell you fried cheese at $20 a pop is owned by some massive multinational with a name like The Thorax Industrial Group.) The Boys are going after Chili’s because of a social media ad the company allegedly ran a few years back, which not only used a version of the group’s massive hit “Sabotage,” but also lots of imagery that made direct reference to the song’s iconic music video.

Unfortunately for us, the Chili’s video appears to have been pretty thoroughly scrubbed from the internet, so it’s impossible for laypeople to judge just how shameless it was in its parody of the Spike Jonze original. None of which is stopping surviving Beastie Boys Ad-Rock and Mike D from going after the chain, citing specifically a provision in their late groupmate Adam Yauch’s will that states that the group’s music cannot and will not be licensed for “third-party product advertising purposes.”

As noted by Rolling Stone, this isn’t the first time the band has gotten litigious on this score: They previously extracted $1.7 million from energy beverage company Monster in 2014 after the brand used the band’s songs without permission. (Also, the group famously got a serious boost to their early careers when they sued British Airways for unauthorized use of the B-side of their very first single, using the $40,000 they got in damages to kickstart their careers.)

The Beastie Boys are seeking monetary damages of at least $150,000 for the infringement. This is what comes, we reckon, of not simply sticking to the greatest chain restaurant jingle of all time.