State Champ Radio Legal News
Page: 108
A Florida reggae band has decided to drop a copyright case accusing Dua Lipa of copying her smash hit song “Levitating” from their earlier track, two days after a federal judge cast serious doubt on the lawsuit’s allegations.
The band, called Artikal Sound System, sued the star last year over accusations that her 2020 song — which spent 77 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart — borrowed its core hook from their lesser-known 2017 tune, “Live Your Life.”
But in a filing on Wednesday (June 7), attorneys for both Artikal Sound System and Lipa filed a joint motion, asking the judge to permanently dismiss the case. There was no indication that Lipa had agreed to pay any money or change the credits to her song.
The filing came just two days after U.S. District Judge Sunshine S. Sykes ruled strongly for Lipa, saying that there was no sign that anyone involved in creating “Levitating” had had “access” to the earlier song — a key requirement in any copyright lawsuit.
That ruling technically dismissed the case against Lipa, but Judge Sykes gave Artikal Sound System another chance to refile an updated version of the case within two weeks. Instead, the band appears to have decided not to pursue further litigation against Lipa and the other “Levitating” co-writers.
In a statement to Billboard on Wednesday evening, Lipa’s attorney Christine Lepera confirmed that the band had chosen to walk away from the litigation unilaterally and that no settlement had been reached.
“Following the court’s decision dismissing their complaint, the plaintiffs voluntarily chose to discontinue the case with prejudice, without any consideration whatsoever from the defendants, who were prepared to vigorously defend any continuation of the case,” said Lepera, an attorney at the law firm Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp.
An attorney for the band did not immediately return a request for comment.
Artikal Sound System’s decision to drop the lawsuit brings an end to one of two high-profile cases filed against Lipa last year over “Levitating,” which peaked at No. 2 on the Hot 100 before securing the honor of being the longest-running top 10 song ever by a female artist on the chart.
The other case, filed by songwriters L. Russell Brown and Sandy Linzer, claims that Lipa lifted the melody to her track from their 1979 song “Wiggle and Giggle All Night” and their 1980 song “Don Diablo.” That case is still pending but faces similar counter-arguments from Lipa’s lawyers about a lack of “access.”
Artikal Sound System is a reggae band based out of South Florida, founded in 2012 as a duo before later adding additional musicians and vocalist Logan Rex. The band released “Live Your Life” on its 2017 EP Smoke and Mirrors.
In their March lawsuit, the band said the songs sounded so similar that it was “highly unlikely that ‘Levitating’ was created independently.” The lawsuit also named Dua Lipa’s label, Warner Records, as well as others who helped create the hit track.
In November, Lipa’s lawyers argued that Artikal Sound System had no proof that Lipa or the other writers ever heard “Live Your Life” before they wrote “Levitating.” They called the allegations “speculative,” “vague” and supported by little real evidence.
Artikal Sound System offered a complex theory for how such “access” might have happened, stating that one of Lipa’s co-writers had previously worked with a woman who was allegedly taught guitar by the brother-in-law of one band member.
But in her ruling on Monday Judge Sykes flatly rejected that argument: “These attenuated links, which bear little connection to either of the two musical compositions at issue here, also do not suggest a reasonable likelihood that defendants actually encountered plaintiffs’ song.”
You might not be seeing many headlines these days about the massive litigation underway in Houston over the deadly 2021 disaster at Travis Scott‘s Astroworld festival. That’s by design.
In a ruling Tuesday, an appeals court in Texas refused to lift a strict gag order that for more than a year has barred attorneys and others from discussing the sprawling litigation over the crowd crush at Astroworld, which left 10 dead and hundreds physically injured.
ABC News had challenged the “sweeping” restrictions, arguing they clearly violated the First Amendment’s protections on free speech and had created a “news desert,” in which almost no reliable information about an important case was being shared with the public.
But in its decision on Tuesday, a three-judge panel from the Court of Appeals For The First District of Texas rejected those arguments. Ruling on a battle over judicial transparency, the appeals court did not issue any written explanation for why it had denied ABC’s challenge.
Starting hours after Nov. 5, 2021 incident, lawyers claiming to represent more than 4,900 victims eventually filed more than 400 lawsuits against Scott, Live Nation and other organizers. The cases, later consolidated into a single “multidistrict litigation,” accuse the Astroworld organizers of being legally negligent in how they planned and conducted the event, including not providing enough security and having insufficient emergency protocols in place. Combined, the victims are seeking billions in damages.
But for a case dealing with a mass-casualty event at a popular music festival with billions at stake, relatively little is known about the Astroworld litigation.
Shortly after Judge Kristen Brauchle Hawkins was appointed to oversee the cases, she issued a “publicity order” that largely prohibited attorneys from speaking about the case, citing concerns that “extensive media coverage” threatened to deprive the parties of their right to a fair trial by tainting the jury pool.
The Feb. 15 ruling was both specific and broad – banning attorneys from discussing a wide range of particular topics, including “the strength and weaknesses of any party” and “rulings of the court,“ but also imposing catch-all restrictions on “any other information” that would “prejudice the trial.”
In challenging that order to the appeals court, ABC News argued that it had deprived the public of information about important judicial proceedings over a newsworthy event. The network warned that attorneys were refusing to share even basic information about the case with journalists, out of “fear of violating its broad and vague provisions.”
“The Gag Order, coupled with the lack of transparency from local and state officials, has created a news desert where many questions raised in the days after the Astroworld Festival remain unanswered,” the company wrote. “By [lifting] the Gag Order, this court would provide those connected to both the Astroworld Festival and the litigation the ‘breathing space’ needed to freely share their experiences, the press the ability to hold them to account, and the public the valuable information they need to better understand the events of November 5, 2021.”
But on Tuesday, the appeals court rejected those arguments. In a one-paragraph decision, the panel recounted ABC News’ argument and said simply: “We deny the petition.”
ABC News can appeal the ruling to the Texas Supreme Court. An attorney for the company did not return a request for comment on Wednesday.
A Grammy Award-winning composer who is suing YouTube over access to its anti-piracy tools is now asking a federal appeals court to postpone her looming trial, filing an emergency motion that says the upcoming proceedings will be “enormously wasteful.”
With a trial set to kick off next week, Maria Schneider asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Monday to “stay” the proceedings, arguing she needs time to litigate her appeal that seeks to overturn a ruling last month that refused to let the case proceed as a class action.
Schneider says that decision, which means the case will not include tens of thousands of other copyright owners, was not only “manifestly erroneous” but also came “only three weeks before trial” – a sudden change that “gravely undermines” the goals of her case.
“The named plaintiffs here joined the case to litigate class claims, and to vindicate their view that YouTube tramples on the rights of independent artists and smaller copyright holders overall, not just those of the individual plaintiffs,” her lawyers told the appeals court.
“A brief stay here to allow this court to … ensure that the district court’s last-minute, haphazard, and erroneous conclusion that this case cannot be tried on a classwide basis does not endanger the progress of this litigation,” Schneider’s attorneys wrote.
Schneider’s lawsuit claims that YouTube has become a “hotbed of piracy” because the platform provides “powerful copyright owners” like record labels with tools including Content ID to block and monetize unauthorized uses of their content, but fails to do the same for “ordinary owners.” She says songwriters and other smaller rights holders are forced instead to use “vastly inferior and time-consuming manual means” of policing infringement, allowing piracy of their material to flourish.
For its part, YouTube says it has done nothing wrong. In court documents, the company has argued that it’s spent “spent over $100 million developing industry-leading tools” to prevent piracy, but that it limits access because “in the hands of the wrong party, these tools can cause serious harm.”
The case was filed as a class action, aiming to let potentially tens of thousands of aggrieved copyright owners team up to fight what Schneider’s lawsuit called “institutionalized misbehavior.” An expert retained by her legal team said the class could include between 10,000 and 20,000 rightsholders.
But in a May 22 ruling, Judge James Donato refused to “certify” the case as a class action, dramatically reducing the scope of the lawsuit. Under federal law, class-action accusers must share very similar legal concerns – and the judge said Schneider’s fellow rightsholders would have widely different cases against YouTube.
“It has been said that copyright claims are poor candidates for class-action treatment, and for good reason,” the judge wrote at the time. “Every copyright claim turns upon facts which are particular to that single claim of infringement [and] every copyright claim is also subject to defenses that require their own individualized inquiries.”
Following that ruling Schneider quickly moved to postpone the trial, which is set to kick off on June 12, while she launched an appeal. But at a hearing days after the ruling, Judge Donato said he would stick to the schedule: “I’m not going to do that. You got a trial set on June 12th. This is a 2020 case; okay. It’s showtime.”
In Monday’s emergency petition to the appeals court, Schneider’s lawyers argued that such a decision was unfair, forcing them to proceed to an expensive trial when the ruling on class certification might later be overturned on appeal.
“The class should not be forced into a situation where an appellate victory would be illusory, placing them back at square one, and the fruits of three years of hard-fought litigation evaporate even when the district court’s failure to certify a class has been confirmed as erroneous,” her lawyers wrote.
A response to the emergency motion from Google is due by the end of Wednesday.
Read the entire petition here:
This is The Legal Beat, a weekly newsletter about music law from Billboard Pro, offering you a one-stop cheat sheet of big new cases, important rulings and all the fun stuff in between.
This week: Prosecutors move to seize R. Kelly’s funds held by Sony Music and Universal Music Publishing Group; Dua Lipa wins the first round in her copyright battle over “Levitating”; a federal judge rules that Tennessee’s anti-drag law is unconstitutional; and much more.
Want to get The Legal Beat newsletter in your email inbox every Tuesday? Subscribe here for free.
THE BIG STORY: Feds Move to Seize R. Kelly’s Royalty Funds
In the wake of criminal convictions that will see him spend decades in prison, R. Kelly is also facing hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines and restitution payments. Last week, the feds told his record label and music publisher to help him pay up.
Prosecutors in Brooklyn asked a federal judge for so-called writs of garnishment against Sony Music and Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG) — court orders that would compel the two companies to hand over funds tied to Kelly. The two companies are “in possession of property” belonging to Kelly, the filing said, that could be used to pay down the $504,289 he owes to victims and the government.
It’s unclear how much Sony Music and UMPG are holding in Kelly-tied money, but the feds aren’t the only ones trying to get at it.
R. Kelly victim Heather Williams, who won a $4 million civil judgment against the singer, is also seeking to tap into the Sony Music account — as is Midwest Commercial Funding, a property management company that won a separate $3.5 million ruling against Kelly over unpaid rent at a Chicago studio.
In March, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that Williams had priority to the funds over Midwest Commercial Funding because she was the first to properly demand the money from Sony. But that ruling left unclear whether she’ll enjoy similar priority over federal prosecutors.
For the full story, go read the entire article, which includes access to the full legal documents filed in court.
Other top stories this week…
DUA LIPA WINS ROUND ONE – A federal judge cast serious doubts on a copyright lawsuit claiming Dua Lipa stole her smash hit song “Levitating” from a little-known reggae track by a band called Artikal Sound System, saying she’s seen no evidence that Lipa ever even heard the song she’s accused of copying.
ADIDAS DROPS YEEZY MONEY CASE – And just like that, it was over. After a whirlwind week of litigation, Adidas abruptly dropped a federal court case aimed at freezing $75 million held by Kanye West’s Yeezy brand. But the two companies will continue to battle it out in a private arbitration case, in which Adidas will likely argue that West’s “offensive conduct” caused the breakdown of their long-standing partnership.
KANYE SUED OVER PAPS CLASH – In other Kanye legal news, the embattled rapper was hit with a civil assault lawsuit over an alleged incident in which the rapper grabbed a paparazzo’s phone and threw it into traffic.
TENN. DRAG LAW RULED UNCONSTITUTIONAL – A federal judge ruled that Tennessee’s first-in-the-nation law restricting drag shows violates the First Amendment, barring prosecutors in Memphis from enforcing the new statute and sending the closely-watched legal battle to a federal appeals court.
DIDDY ACCUSES BOOZE GIANT OF RACISM – Sean “Diddy” Combs filed a scathing lawsuit against alcohol giant Diageo for allegedly breaching their partnership deal for a brand of tequila, leveling accusations of racism at the company and claiming it has treated his product line “worse than others because he is Black.”
HOV WINS $7M OVER COLOGNE DEAL – A New York state appeals court sided with Jay-Z in his long legal battle against a fragrance company called Parlux over a cologne endorsement deal that went bad, ordering the company to pay him nearly $7 million in unpaid royalties.
PRODUCER ACCUSED OF HARASSMENT – A new lawsuit filed in Los Angeles claims that Grammy-nominated dance music producer and DJ Paul Oakenfold repeatedly masturbated in front of his former personal assistant. He quickly denied the accusations, calling them “a calculated attempt to tarnish my reputation and extort money.”
SHEERAN CASE HEADS TO APPEAL – A month after Ed Sheeran won a high-profile jury verdict that his “Thinking Out Loud” did not infringe Marvin Gaye‘s “Let’s Get It On,” his copyright accusers formally launched their appeal at the U.S. Court of Appeal for the Second Circuit.
INDIE ROCKERS SETTLE CEREAL SPAT – The band OK Go reached a confidential settlement to end a bizarre legal battle with Post Foods over a new line of on-the-go cereal packages called “OK Go!,” which the band believed infringed the trademark rights to its name.
K-POP INSIDER TRADING? – Three employees at the record label HYBE could reportedly be prosecuted for insider trading in South Korea for allegedly using non-public information about K-pop group BTS’ planned hiatus before the news was given to investors.
A federal judge has serious doubts about a copyright lawsuit claiming Dua Lipa stole her smash hit song “Levitating” from a little-known reggae track, saying she’s seen no evidence that Lipa ever even heard the song she’s accused of copying.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
The band Artikal Sound System sued the star last year, claiming her 2020 song – which spent 77 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart – borrowed its core hook from their 2017 tune “Live Your Life.”
But in a ruling on Monday, U.S. District Judge Sunshine S. Sykes said there was no sign that anyone involved in creating “Levitating” had had “access” to the earlier song – a key requirement in any copyright lawsuit.
Artikal Sound System offered a complex theory: that one of Lipa’s co-writer had previously worked with a woman who was allegedly taught guitar by the brother-in-law of one band member. But in her ruling, Judge Sykes was clearly unimpressed.
“These attenuated links, which bear little connection to either of the two musical compositions at issue here, also do not suggest a reasonable likelihood that defendants actually encountered plaintiffs’ song,” the judge wrote.
The band also claimed that the song was so widely-available that the “Levitating” writers must have heard it, citing the fact that it had been played at concerts, that they had sold “several hundred” physical CDs, and that it was available on some streaming platforms.
But Judge Sykes said those arguments were “too generic or too insubstantial” to sustain a lawsuit.
“Plaintiffs’ failure to specify how frequently they performed “Live Your Life” publicly during the specified period, where these performances took place, and the size of the venues and/or audiences precludes the Court from finding that Plaintiffs’ live performances of the song plausibly contributed to its saturation of markets in which Defendants would have encountered it,” the judge wrote.
In technical terms, Monday’s ruling dismissed the lawsuit against Lipa. But the case isn’t over: the judge ruled that Artikal Sound System could try to fix the mistakes she had identified and refiled a so-called amended complaint.
Attorneys for both sides did not return requests for comment on Tuesday.
“Levitating,” released on 2020 on Lipa’s second studio album Future Nostalgia, was a massive hit, eventually peaking at No. 2 on the Hot 100 and securing the honor of being the longest-running top 10 song ever by a female artist on the chart.
Artikal Sound System is a reggae band based out of South Florida, founded in 2012 as a duo before later adding additional musicians and vocalist Logan Rex. The band released “Live Your Life” on its 2017 EP Smoke and Mirrors.
In their March lawsuit, the band said the songs sounded so similar that it was “highly unlikely that ‘Levitating’ was created independently.” The lawsuit also named Warner Records, as well as others who helped create the hit track.
But in November, Lipa’s lawyers made counter-arguments that were largely adopted in Monday’s ruling, claiming that the band’s efforts to show that Lipa or the other writers ever heard “Live Your Life” were “tortured” and “nothing more than a speculative.”
“Plaintiffs are essentially seeking to plead access,” the star’s legal team wrote, “by alleging that someone who knows someone who knows someone might have met one of the ‘Levitating’ writers.”
Following Monday’s decision, Artikal Sound System has until June 16 to refile their case.
Sean “Diddy” Combs‘ son, 29-year-old Justin Combs, was arrested for DUI in Los Angeles this weekend. A spokesperson for the LAPD confirmed to Billboard on Monday morning (June 5) that the younger Combs was taken into custody on Sunday morning on a misdemeanor DUI charge. At press time no additional information was available on the […]
The band OK Go has reached a confidential settlement to end a bizarre legal battle with Post Foods over a new line of on-the-go cereal packages called “OK Go!”
Just months after OK Go — a power pop band best known for its viral music videos — vowed to fight back against a “big corporation” that “chose to steal the name of our band to market disposable plastic cups of sugar to children,” attorneys for both sides asked a Minnesota federal judge to dismiss the lawsuit permanently, with each side paying their own legal bills.
The filing said that the two sides had “settled this action on terms agreeable to all parties,” but did not include specific terms of the agreement in public court records, like whether the band would be paid or if Post would change the brand name. Neither side immediately returned requests for comment on Friday (June 2).
The settlement will resolve an unusual legal dispute that pitted a pop band against a multinational food company, asking the question: Will consumers who see a portable snack package of Fruity Pebbles on a supermarket shelf think that a band with a similar name had endorsed it?
The fight started in September when an attorney for the band sent a cease-and-desist letter warning Post that OK Go was “surprised and alarmed” to see Post’s new product line. He claimed the name infringed the trademark rights to the band’s name since it would “suggest to consumers that OK Go is endorsing Post’s products,” or falsely imply that the cereal company had received permission to use it.
“Our client regards this matter with the utmost seriousness and has authorized us to take all steps necessary in any venue to protect its rights,” OK Go’s attorney wrote in the September letter. “If we do not hear from you within 10 days of the date of this letter, we will assume that Post does not wish to resolve this matter amicably.”
A week later, an attorney representing Post responded, saying that the company must “respectfully disagree” with the band’s accusations. The attorney argued that rock music and breakfast cereal were “clearly unrelated” products and that the phrase “OK Go” was merely a common term that had previously been used by many other companies on their products.
In January, Post took the battle to court, asking a federal judge for what’s known as a “declaratory judgment” — meaning a pre-emptive ruling that the company did nothing wrong. Post argued that the trademark rights of a rock band like OK Go don’t extend to an unrelated product like cereal and that the new cups are clearly marked with Post’s own brand names to avoid any confusion.
“Without resolution by this court, Post will be unfairly forced to continue investing in its new OK GO! brand while under the constant threat of unfounded future litigation by defendants,” the cereal company wrote in its lawsuit.
In a statement to Billboard at the time, the members of OK Go said they’d been surprised to learn of Post’s lawsuit.
“A big corporation chose to steal the name of our band to market disposable plastic cups of sugar to children. That was an unwelcome surprise, to say the least,” the band wrote. “But then they sue US about it? Presumably, the idea is that they can just bully us out of our own name, since they have so much more money to spend on lawyers? I guess that’s often how it works, but hopefully, we’ll be the exception.”
According to Post’s lawsuit, the company had offered to pay the band as part of a “good faith effort” to resolve the dispute without resorting to litigation, despite its belief that the accusations lacked legal merit. The company claimed OK Go rejected that offer and made no counter-proposal, leaving Post with no choice but to file a lawsuit.
A month after Ed Sheeran won a high-profile jury verdict that his “Thinking Out Loud” did not infringe Marvin Gaye‘s “Let’s Get It On,” his copyright accusers have formally launched their appeal.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
The heirs of Ed Townsend — who co-wrote the iconic song with Gaye – filed a so-called notice of appeal Thursday in Manhattan federal court, the first step toward asking a federal appeals court (the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit) to overturn the outcome and revive their lawsuit against Sheeran.
The upcoming appellate battle will mark the next chapter in nearly seven years of litigation over “Thinking Out Loud” — a commercial and critical success that hit No. 2 on the Hot 100 before eventually winning the Grammy Award for song of the year.
In their suit, Kathryn Townsend Griffin and other Townsend heirs claimed that Sheeran had “knowingly and intentionally infringed” the earlier tune, stealing the “heart” from one of the most “instantly recognizable songs in R&B history.”
The two songs at issue in the case do sound similar, as even Sheeran has seemingly acknowledged: The star was captured on video at a 2014 concert toggling back and forth between them, drawing huge applause from the audience. But his lawyers say that’s simply because the two tracks share commonplace musical building blocks – elements that are free for all to use and cannot be “monopolized” under copyright law.
After years of delay, the case finally went to trial in April. Lawyers for the Townsends urged the jurors to “give credit where credit is due,” playing that concert video of Sheeran and calling it a “smoking gun.” But Sheeran’s lawyers, supported by testimony from the star himself that included a brief guitar performance, argued the star had done nothing wrong by using “the scaffolding on which all songwriting is built.”
On May 4, jurors sided with Sheeran, finding that he and his co-writer had independently created “Thinking Out Loud” without copying it from “Let’s Get It On” and clearing him of millions in potential legal damages.
A verdict against the singer would have reverberated throughout the music industry, much like an infamous 2015 verdict against Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams over their megahit “Blurred Lines,” which made musicians and companies more cautious about similar-sounding songs. Instead, his case represents the latest lawsuit in which such claims were rejected, following a 2020 ruling on Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway To Heaven” and a 2022 ruling on Katy Perry’s “Dark Horse.”
Thursday’s motion – procedural first step in any appeal in federal court – does not include detailed arguments; those will be filed later at the Second Circuit. But they will likely include challenges to what evidence the judge allowed to be used in the case and how he conducted the trial in April. Such appeals typically face an uphill climb, particularly when a case was decided by a jury rather than by a judge.
Briefs will be filed at the Second Circuit in the coming months. It could take the court well over a year to issue a final ruling.
A paparazzo is suingKanye West over an alleged incident in which the rapper grabbed her phone and threw it into traffic, according to court documents obtained by Billboard.
Photographer Nichol Lechmanik is suing West (sometimes known as Ye) for assault, battery, negligence and interference with the exercise of her civil rights following the alleged altercation, which occurred on the afternoon of Jan. 27 outside Sports Academy in Newbury Park, Calif., per the complaint filed in California Superior Court in Ventura County on Wednesday (May 31).
Lechmanik alleges that while driving her car and filming Ye’s ex-wife Kim Kardashian as she exited the facility, she noticed that West was “angrily confronting” another photographer on the street outside. “Given Defendant Ye’s reputation for violence against photographers, his history of physically harming them, and based on his threatening body language, Plaintiff became fearful for the photographer’s safety,” the complaint reads. It states that Lechmanik then began filming the incident on her phone from inside her car with the window open.
Lechmanik alleges that Ye then walked up to her car and “aggressively” said, “You all ain’t gonna run up on me like that,” and when she replied that she wasn’t, he became “enraged,” reached into her car and “ripped her phone out of her hands” before throwing it “onto the street towards oncoming traffic.”
According to the lawsuit, Lechmanik said the incident caused her “great mental, and emotional pain and suffering” and that she “anticipates incurring medical and related expenses.”
Lechmanik is requesting general and special damages, punitive and exemplary damages, civil penalties and costs of the suit. Additionally, she’s asking for an order enjoining West and “all persons acting in concert with him or acting on his behalf, from touching, striking, annoying, contacting, molesting, attacking, threatening, or otherwise interfering with…the Plaintiff, and all persons similarly situated, to pursue the occupation of photographer.”
West has a long history of legal scuffles with paparazzi that stem all the way back to 2008 when he was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport after breaking the flash of a paparazzo’s camera.
Three HYBE employees could be prosecuted for insider trading in South Korea for allegedly using non-public information about K-pop group BTS’ planned hiatus before the news was given to investors, according to multiple reports out of South Korea. South Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service (FSS), the equivalent of the Securities Exchange Commission in the U.S., […]
