Via Reuters/Billboard:

Guns N’ Roses and Universal Music Group’s Interscope-Geffen A&M label were sued by British label Independiente and the U.S. arm of Domino Recording Company, who own the licensing rights to songs by German electronic musician Ulrich Schnauss.

Singer Axl Rose and Guns N’ Roses band members and album producers copied portions of two of Schnauss songs–”Wherever You Are” and “A Strangely Isolated Place”–for a song used on the band’s last album called “Riad N’ the Bedouins,” according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit, filed on Friday but made available on Monday, seeks $1 million in damages. A spokesperson for Interscope-Geffen A&M, owned by Vivendi’s Universal Music Group, was not available for comment.

You might have thought the labels suing the band and Universal Music would have done so last fall, when there was a biggish to-do about the album and when the band and Universal Music were siccing the federal government on bloggers who posted links to unauthorized MP3s from the album.

Anyway, it’s another good opportunity to remind the young people of today why the young people of 20 years ago were really into Guns N’ Roses: They used to be great!

Also, I am still trying to track down a recording of any of the songs from the Axl Rose-inspired “White Trash Wins Lotto,” the best musical I’ve ever seen (the version I saw featured a pre-“Ratatouille” Patton Oswalt, I think). Any help greatly appreciated…

It’s an amazing list: “Toy Story,” “A Bug’s Life,” “Toy Story 2,” “Monsters Inc.,” “Finding Nemo,” “The Incredibles,” “Cars,” “Ratatouille” and “Wall-E.”

Nine movies, nine success stories.

Can they make it 10 for 10? The next big release for Pixar, which is coming up in late May, is a movie called “Up.” If you have kids, you’ve likely seen the trailer by now. At the heart of the movie is an old geezer named Carl, who is voiced by Ed Asner; he’s accompanied on some adventures by a 9-year-old Boy Scout sidekick named Russell.

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When Daily Variety broke the news that Pixar had hired writers for the pitch that became the 2007 release, ‘Ratatouille,’ Steve Jobs tracked the reporter down at the Sundance Film Festival, demanding to know her sources and threatening to fire the film’s writers. He called her on the private line of a rented condo–a number she had not given out to anyone. She still doesn’t know how he found it.”

– Daily Variety, June 18, 2006

Beyond the technology on display at Tuesday’s Apple event, what was perhaps most interesting was the accuracy with which it had been predicted. Astonishing really, given Apple’s near-monomaniacal secrecy. With the exception of that bogus $800 MacBook story, nearly every single rumor voiced in the weeks preceding Tuesday’s event was proven true–Apple’s new “brick” manufacturing process, aluminum enclosures for consumer MacBooks, LED backlit display, multi-touch glass trackpads, the screaming fast new Nvidia GPUs, even the date of the MacBook event itself. So when CEO Steve Jobs took the stage and said, “we have some exciting new products to show you,” most everyone sitting in the audience already had a pretty damn good idea what they were about to be shown. And that’s got to bother Apple (AAPL), which has long argued that leaks dampen excitement around product launches and taken legal action against rumor sites that publish them. Certainly, Jobs, showman that he is, can’t be pleased that the rabbits he’d planned to pull out of his hat Tuesday were hopping willy-nilly about the stage before he even arrived.

But apparently there’s little Apple can do to stop it. Or it’s given up trying. Or something else. “There used to be saying at Apple,” Jobs recalled at our D5 conference: “Isn’t it funny? A ship that leaks from the top.”

Perhaps it’s time for that saying be brought back into popular usage.

Thus, a new regular feature for BoomTown is born for 2008!

See here:

We aren’t saying who the rat is–that’s for Mark to figure out over the next year!

By the way, “Ratatouille” had already yielded us our first look-alike with our beloved Walt Mossberg and Anton Ego, which we posted earlier this year after a bit of judicious Photoshopping:

I would say consider the source, but Blodget–despite his tainted reputation from Bubble 1.0–is still savvy about this arena and is probably right that Microsoft has got to be considering a run at the hotsy-totsy company of the moment, as I have said is Google.

That one has more legs–and the price would be even higher, as Google has jacked up its spending. Why not? Its own stock is at bubble highs, too, and it is making acquisitions as if it were Speed Racer. Careful, Speed!

Speaking of moving fast, if he does get a price in this lofty range, I would say Zuckerberg’s a fool for not taking the money and running. But wait–he can’t run, he’s in flip-flops.

And while it had the chance to be at this high-roller table once, by the way, at least Yahoo can’t afford this heady game of stupid, inflated money-chasing the very-nice-but-woefully-tiny Facebook. Maybe Yahoo’s luck is changing!

Until then, enjoy our own little amusement comparing our beloved Walt Mossberg with Anton Ego from the new kids’ movie, “Ratatouille.”

When our very talented Web genius Adam Tow ginned this up with a goatee beard and iPhone, too (pretty much all you need to know it’s Walt), I knew I had no choice but to post it.

Our apologies to Pixar, but this renewed dot-com frenzy has us all a little silly, doesn’t it?

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.