Sport TV tsotsis stole my slogan: Cassper

Rapper Cassper Nyovest and Riky Rick and twin DJs Major League are up in arms after pay channel SuperSport 4 began using the phrase "slyza tsotsi" in promos for PSL games.

Slyza Tsotsi is the name of the foursome's hit song, which has been downloaded well over 300000 times. The term loosely means "run for it, thug".

Cassper tweeted yesterday: "SuperSport 4 is using the Slyza Tsotsi slogan. Are we getting payed [sic]? Nope. Just like when Savanna used my s**t. Corporates never loved us."

Major League tweeted: "#SlyzaTsotsi Slogan is on Super Sport!Hawu? Where and who? No one has approached us for it?"

Riky Rick tweeted : "The crazy thing is that we know so many people up there.

"Sad that they don't respect us. #SlyzaTsotsi."

But do the musicians have legitimate reasons to be upset?

SuperSport spokesman Clinton van der Berg dismissed the hullabaloo, saying: "Slyza Tsotsi has been part of tsotsi taal for a while.

"Had SuperSport used the song, which we didn't, Cassper would have been quite right to complain.

"The phrase, however, is a rich part of popular culture. As far as we are aware Cassper owns no copyright to the slang itself."

Herman Blignaut, a partner at intellectual property law firm Spoor & Fisher, said single words or slogans were generally not protected by copyright, as they were "usually considered to be of insufficient substance to warrant copyright protection".

He said in this case, the phrase had not been registered by Nyovest and company as a trademark, and was probably too short and insubstantial to constitute a copyright infringement.

Last May, Cassper was irked by a Savanna Dark cider advert that used the tag line "Dark, dark Shebeleza" - a play on his smash hit, Doc Shebeleza.

He reportedly wrote on Facebook then: "Didn't get a cent from this campaign and it's everywhere on social networks.

"Pretty f***ed up what these corporates can do to us small fish who work hard to accumulate popularity and relevance.

"I'm sho [sic] they will say they have nun [sic] to do with it even doe [sic] it came from they [sic] Twitter account so I ain't even gonna budge with legal s*** but I was just saying. Le tlala la lona. This is whack."