Legal News
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Offset is suing a producer who worked on his 2023 album Set It Off, claiming the one-time collaborator has been demanding a large increase in fees and royalties long after the deal was done.
In a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles federal court, attorneys for the former Migos member say that reps for ChaseTheMoney (Chase Rose) signed a contract ahead of the album’s October 2023 release, covering payment for his production work on the track “Worth It.” But months later, ChaseTheMoney’s new manager allegedly reached out to demand more money for the same work.
“The new manager proposed new terms for the producer agreement, including a producer fee that was more than five times the amount of the producer fee that was agreed upon, and a royalty percentage more than double,” Offset’s lawyers write in their Tuesday (March 11) court complaint.
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After Offset’s team “promptly responded” the deal had already been locked down and “would not be re-negotiated,” his lawyers say reps for ChaseTheMoney repeatedly offered other versions of the contract, each containing “different proposals as to the financial terms.”
When Offset’s team allegedly continued to refuse to alter the deal, the lawsuit claims that ChaseTheMoney began claiming that the previous manager who had negotiated the Set It Off deal — a man identified only as J Hill in court documents — was actually “not his manager” at the time the original deal was struck.
But according to Tuesday’s lawsuit, ChaseTheMoney clearly sent them to J Hill to work out the deal, saying the producer told Offset and his team via text message that Hill would “figure logistics” for clearing his contributions to “Worth It.”
“ChaseTheMoney referred to J Hill as his manager in various correspondence to Offset and his A&R team [and] ChaseTheMoney directed Offset and his A&R team to discuss the clearance of the recording with J Hill on ChaseTheMoney’s behalf,” Offset’s lawyers write. “J Hill had confirmed in writing that he represented ChaseTheMoney as his manager, and no person affiliated with or connected to ChaseTheMoney had ever claimed or contended prior to July of 2024 that that J Hill was not ChaseTheMoney’s manager.”
The terms of the original deal, according to Offset, gave Chase a $10,000 producer fee and half of the 2 percent producer royalty, minus certain amounts that were deemed recording costs and recoupable advances.
When reached for comment Thursday (March 13) via direct message on Instagram, ChaseTheMoney said: “I’m not being sued. It’s the other way around lol.” He declined to comment further, then deleted those messages. After a review of court records, Billboard was not able to locate a lawsuit filed by Chase against Offset.
Reps for Offset did not immediately return requests for comment on Thursday.
In technical terms, the lawsuit filed this week is what’s known as a “declaratory judgment” action —meaning Offset is not accusing Chase of legal wrongdoing but instead is arguing that Chase is improperly accusing him of doing something wrong. By filing such a case, Offset is asking a judge to rule that the original contract is valid and enforceable and that he has complied with all of its requirements.
Tuesday isn’t the first time Offset has filed such a lawsuit over a music contract.
Back in 2022, the rapper filed a similar declaratory judgment lawsuit against Quality Control Music, the record label that helped launch his career as a member of Migos. In it, he claimed the company was continuing to seek to control of his solo work, even though he had “paid handsomely” for the right to break free from his original record deal: “Offset now brings this action to vindicate his rights and to make it clear to the world that Offset, not Quality Control, owns Offset’s music.”
The star later dropped that lawsuit in August 2023.
Free Our Art, a new non-profit dedicated to safeguarding First Amendment creative freedoms for artists, has officially launched with widespread support from major arts advocacy groups and creative industry leaders.
The nonprofit focuses on the growing trend of creative works being used as confessions in court, advocating for state and federal legislation to limit this practice, supporting legal aid for defendants and funding research.
Free Our Art backs legislation establishing a single standard for admitting creative expression as evidence in court. The bipartisan federal Restoring Artistic Protection (RAP) Act was reintroduced in 2023, and states including Georgia, Maryland, Missouri and New York are considering similar bills. This follows cases where courts have overturned convictions due to prejudicial use of lyrics as evidence.
The movement began in the music industry, where artists have faced increasing legal scrutiny, particularly in hip-hop.
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Supporters include the Recording Academy, Black Music Action Coalition, Recording Industry Association of America, Songwriters of North America and SAG-AFTRA, among others. The organization’s leadership includes Harvey Mason jr., Julie Greenwald and Lyor Cohen, with advisory boards co-chaired by advocates and scholars including Dina LaPolt, Willie “Prophet” Stiggers, Dr. Erik Nielson and Lucius Outlaw III.
“RIAA is proud to stand with the creative community supporting free expression,” said Michele Ballantyne, president and COO of RIAA. “Free Our Art stands for responsible, balanced legislative approaches that protect the First Amendment and safeguard and encourage all forms of creative expression while allowing reasonable, limited use of artist works in court only where they are truly relevant and necessary and not being used to inflame and distort the process.”
Mason jr. added: “Music has always been a powerful tool for storytelling and self-expression, and unfairly silencing any genre or form of creativity is a violation against all music people. With the Free Our Art coalition, the Recording Academy will continue leading the fight to protect artists’ right to create freely, without fear of their work being criminalized.”
According to Free Our Art, scholars have documented nearly 700 cases where lyrics, primarily in hip-hop, were used in legal proceedings — with actual instances likely much higher. The group also cites a 2019 study at Arizona State University School of Law that found judges often fail to exclude creative works as character evidence, underscoring the need for legislative action.
Calling an artist’s right to create without fear “non-negotiable,” LaPolt, co-founder of SONA, said that “twisting creative expression into courtroom evidence isn’t just wrong—it’s a blatant attack on our First Amendment rights. This isn’t about one artist or one genre; it’s about protecting every creator from a dangerous legal precedent.”
The issue of lyrics being used in court gained renewed attention following the May 2022 indictment of rappers Young Thug and Gunna on RICO charges, where prosecutors cited song lyrics as evidence of gang affiliation. Young Thug received a 15-year probation sentence, while Gunna was released in December 2022 after pleading guilty to a gang-related charge.
Free Our Art aims to prevent similar cases from unfairly targeting artists based on their creative expression. More information on the organization’s efforts can be found here.
Last month, Vice President J.D. Vance represented the U.S. at the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris. In a speech addressing top leaders from around the world, he declared, “I think our response [to AI] is to be too self-conscious, too risk-averse, but never have I encountered a breakthrough in tech that so clearly calls us to do precisely the opposite. […] We believe excessive regulation of the AI sector could kill a transformative industry just as it’s taking off.”
Vance’s comments marked a stark shift from the Biden administration, which often spoke about weighing AI’s “profound possibilities” with its “risks,” as the former president put it in his farewell address in January. In the wake of Vance’s remarks in Paris, it’s clear that in the Trump White House, AI safety is out and the race for dominance is in. What does that mean for the music business and its quest to protect copyrights and publicity rights in the AI age?
“All the focus is on the competition with China, so national security has become the number one issue with AI in the Trump administration,” says Mitch Glazier, CEO/president of the Recording Industry Association of America. “But for our industry, it’s interesting. The [Trump administration] does seem to be saying at the same time that we also need to be ‘America First’ with our [intellectual property] too. It’s both ‘America First’ for IP and ‘America First’ for AI.”
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That, Glazier thinks, provides an opportunity for the music business to continue to push its AI agenda in D.C. While the president does not have the remit to make alterations to copyright protection in the U.S., the Trump administration still has powerful sway with the Republican-dominated legislative branch, where the RIAA, the Recording Academy and others have been fighting to get new protections for music on the books. Glazier says there’s been no change in strategy there — it’s still full steam ahead, trying to get those bills passed into law in 2025.
Top copyright attorney Jacqueline Charlesworth, partner at Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz, still fears that Vance’s speech — as well as President Trump’s inauguration in January, where he was flanked by top executives from Apple, Meta, Amazon and Alphabet — “reflected a lot of influence from the large tech platforms.” Many major tech companies have taken the position that training their AI models on copyrights does not require consent, credit or compensation. “My concern is that creators and copyright owners will be casualties in the AI race,” she says.
For David Israelite, president/CEO of the National Music Publishers’ Association, it’s still too early to totally understand the new administration’s views on copyright and AI. But, he says, “we are concerned when the language is about rushing to train these models — and that becoming a more important principle than how they are trained.”
Glazier holds out hope that Trump’s bullish approach to trade agreements with other nations could benefit American copyright owners and may influence trade partners to honor U.S. copyrights. Specifically, he points to the U.K., where the government has recently proposed granting AI companies unrestricted access to copyrighted material for training their models unless the rights holder manually opts out. Widely despised by copyright holders of all kinds, the music industry has protested the opt-out proposal in recent weeks through op-eds in national newspapers, comments to the U.K. government and through a silent album, Is This What We Want?, co-authored by a thousand U.K. artists, including Kate Bush, Damon Albarn and Hans Zimmer.
Organized by AI developer, musician and founder of AI safety non-profit Fairly Trained, Ed Newton-Rex, Is This What We Want? features silent tracks recorded in famous studios around London to demonstrate the potential consequences of not protecting copyrighted songs. “The artists and the industry in the U.K. have done an incredible job,” says Glazier. “If for some reason the U.K. does impose this opt-out, which we think is totally unworkable, then this administration may have an opportunity to apply pressure because of a renewal of trade negotiations.”
Israelite agrees. “Much of the intellectual property fueling these AI models is American,” he says. “The U.S. tackles copyright issues all the time in trade agreements, so we are always looking into that angle of it.”
It’s not just American music industry trade groups that have been following the Trump administration’s approach to AI. Abbas Lightwalla, director of global legal policy for the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), the global organization representing the interests of the recorded music business, says he and his colleagues followed Vance’s Paris speech “with great interest,” and that future trade agreements between the U.S. and other nations are “absolutely on the radar,” given that IFPI advocates across the world for the music industry’s interests in trade negotiations. “It’s crucial to us that copyright is protected in every market,” he says. “It’s a cross-border issue… If the U.S. is doing the same, then I think that’s a benefit to every culture everywhere to be honest.”
Charlesworth says this struggle is nothing new; the music industry has dealt with challenges to copyright protection for decades. “In reflecting on this, I feel like, starting in the ‘90s and 2000s, the tech business had this ‘take now, pay later’ mentality to copyright. Now, it feels like it’s turned into ‘take now, and see if you can get away with it.’ It’s not even pay later.”
As the AI race continues to pick up at a rapid pace, Israelite says he’s “not that hopeful that we are going to see any kind of government action quickly that would give us guidance” — so he’s also watching the active lawsuits surrounding AI training and copyright closely and looking to the commercial space for businesses in AI and IP that are voluntarily working out solutions together. “We’re very involved and focused on partnerships with AI that can help pave the way for how this technology provides new revenue opportunities for music, not just threats,” he says.
Glazier says he’s working in the commercial marketplace, too. “We have 60 licensing agreements in place right now between AI companies and music companies,” he says. Meanwhile, the RIAA is still watching the two lawsuits it spearheaded for the three major music companies against AI music startups Suno and Udio and is working to get bills like the NO FAKES Act and NO AI FRAUD Act passed into law.
“While IP wasn’t on the radar in Vance’s speech, the aftermath of it totally shifted the conversation,” says Glazier. “We just have to keep working to protect copyrights.”
Bad Bunny’s sports agency, Rimas Sports, and the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) reached an agreement this month (March 6) to settle a lawsuit over penalties tied to improper inducements, according to Associated Press. The parties filed a stipulation with U.S. District Judge Jennifer H. Rearden in Manhattan, confirming that they had resolved the […]
Sony Music is suing the University of Southern California (USC) for more than $25 million over claims that the college sports powerhouse illegally used songs by Michael Jackson, Beyonce and AC/DC in TikTok and Instagram videos hyping its teams.
In a complaint filed Tuesday (March 11) in New York federal court, the music giant says the school posted more than 250 videos featuring over 170 unlicensed tracks to its social media channels, including those by Britney Spears, Harry Styles, SZA, Mariah Carey, OutKast, Pink Floyd and Travis Scott.
“USC has one of the most lucrative college sports programs in the world, realizing over $200 million annually in revenues from its participation in a multi-billion dollar college sports,” the label’s attorneys write. “Despite having been on notice of its infringing conduct, USC has repeatedly failed to obtain licenses for its use of Sony Music sound recording.”
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Seeking $150,000 in so-called statutory damages for every song used, the lawsuit is demanding more than $25 million in potential damages — or more, if Sony can prove that it suffered even greater losses.
According to Sony Music, USC was notified of the problem as early as June 2021 and has been repeatedly warned since
“Rather than cease this infringing conduct, USC chose to flout copyright law, repeatedly posting new videos to the USC Social Media Pages that use Sony Music sound recordings knowingly and willfully and without permission,” the company wrote. “USC even left many uses available online after being put on notice from Sony Music that they were infringing.”
Social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram provide huge libraries of licensed music for users to add to their videos. But there’s a key restriction: The songs can’t be used for commercial or promotional videos posted by brands. That kind of content requires a separate “synch” license, just like any conventional advertisement on TV.
That crucial distinction has led to numerous lawsuits in recent years.
Beginning in 2021, all three majors sued drink maker Bang Energy over its TikTok videos, with Universal Music Group (UMG) and Sony Music eventually winning large judgments. In May, Sony filed a case against Marriott over accusations that the hotel chain had used nearly 1,000 of its songs in social media posts. In July, Kobalt and other publishers sued more than a dozen NBA teams over the same thing. The restaurant chain Chili’s has been sued twice, once by the Beastie Boys and later by UMG over tracks from Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber and dozens of other artists.
In Tuesday’s case against USC, attorneys for Sony say that the school’s own social media brand guidelines expressly warned against using copyrighted music in videos: “If you want to feature ‘popular music’ in your video, as in music you hear on the radio, you must license it from the publishing company and or record company,” USC’s guide allegedly reads.
“In flagrant disregard of this clear guidance, USC itself has distributed hundreds of videos (if not more) which contain infringing uses of Sony Music’s sound recordings,” Sony’s lawyers write in the lawsuit. “These uses were made without permission, without compensation to Sony Music and its artists, and in violation of USC’s own written guidelines.”
A spokesperson for USC did not immediately return a request for comment on Wednesday (March 12).
George Clinton is suing his one-time business partner, Armen Boladian, over allegations that he fraudulently obtained the rights to the vast majority of the funk pioneer’s music catalog.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday (March 11) in Florida federal court, attorneys for Clinton accused Boladian and his Bridgeport Music of “abusive, deceptive, and fraudulent practices” that were aimed at stealing from Clinton and “capitalizing on his success.”
“I’m fighting for my life’s work and to ensure future generations of artists are treated fairly,” Clinton said in a statement released by his lawyers. “When you’re young and just starting out in the music industry, it’s easy for others to take advantage of you.”
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The sweeping complaint accuses Boladian of carrying out a “decades long scheme to defraud Clinton,” including improperly using the star’s signature to grant himself rights to Clinton’s music and fabricating key legal agreements. The conduct has left Boladian and Bridgeport in control of 90 percent of Clinton’s catalog, the lawsuit says.
“For decades, George Clinton has shaped the sound of music and inspired generations of artists, yet he has been systematically deprived of the rights and royalties he rightfully deserves,” said Ben Crump, an attorney who is representing Clinton in the lawsuit.
In a statement to Billboard, Boladian’s attorney Richard Busch sharply denied the allegations: “This is just the latest in a series of lawsuits that Mr. Clinton has filed against Armen Boladian and his companies over the last 30 years raising the same exact issues. He has lost each and every time, including in the very courthouse in which he has filed this latest lawsuit. We will obviously therefore be moving to dismiss this lawsuit and will be seeking sanctions.”
Notably, in addition to seeking damages, the lawsuit is seeking an injunction to stop Boladian from shopping Clinton’s catalog to potential buyers — something the star’s lawyers suggest he’s actively doing: “Plaintiff has reason to believe that Boladian is soliciting the sale of assets including the rights and ownership interests in Plaintiff catalog.”
Bridgeport Music is well-known in the world of music law. The company has filed huge numbers of copyright infringement lawsuits against major artists who allegedly sampled songs by Clinton and others, including one case against Jay-Z and another case over an N.W.A. song that resulted in an influential decision on sampling.
In Tuesday’s lawsuit, Clinton’s attorneys cited that litigation campaign in his allegations against Boladian, calling his foe a “copyright troll” who uses lawsuits to exploit songs “he looted the rights to.”
“Interestingly, Clinton, the rightful owner of said catalog, has never been included as a plaintiff in these lawsuits nor has he received any portion of the millions secured by Boladian,” Clinton’s attorneys wrote.
Read the entire lawsuit here:
A federal judge has dismissed a defamation lawsuit filed by R. Kelly’s former assistant against Netflix and Lifetime over how she was portrayed in the documentary “Surviving R. Kelly,” ruling that the networks are protected by the First Amendment.
The lawsuit from Diana Copeland, who says she worked for Kelly for more than a decade, claimed that the doc series “depicts her in a sinister and defamatory light” – including falsely suggesting that she had helped the now-convicted singer prey on young women.
But in a ruling Tuesday, Judge Stephanos Bibas said Copeland had failed to clear the “high bar” for filing libel cases over newsworthy subjects: “The First Amendment demands ‘adequate breathing space’ for the free flow of ideas, especially about public figures on matters of public controversy.”
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The judge dismissed the lawsuit, but gave Copeland a chance to refile an updated version of her lawsuit. In a statement to Billboard, her attorney said she would successfully do so: “In this new streaming world, platforms like Netflix and documentarians need to be held accountable for any damages caused to people by slander in their content.”
An attorney for Lifetime and Netflix did not immediately return a request for comment.
Released in early 2019 as a six-part documentary series, “Surviving R. Kelly” helped push the longstanding abuse allegations against Kelly back into the public eye. Later that same year, the singer was indicted by federal prosecutors on a slew of criminal charges, eventually resulting in convictions on racketeering, sex trafficking and child pornography and decades-long prison sentences.
Copeland sued last year, with her attorneys claiming that episodes of the Lifetime documentary, which was later added to Netflix’s catalog, “paint Ms. Copeland as Mr. Kelly’s co-conspirator and accomplice in victimizing children and young women.”
But in Tuesday’s decision dismissing those claims, Judge Bibas ruled that Copeland was a so-called public figure — a status that makes it very hard to win a defamation lawsuit.
Under landmark U.S. Supreme Court rulings, someone like Copeland must show that Lifetime acted with “actual malice,” meaning the network either knew its claims were false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth. That difficult-to-meet standard is designed to prevent government officials, business execs and other powerful people from abusing libel suits to stifle free speech.
Copeland had argued that she was no celebrity and simply wanted to “lead a private life” despite her work for Kelly. But Judge Bibas pointed out that she had appeared on Good Morning America to discuss the allegations and defend her conduct: “By going on national TV to discuss Kelly, Copeland voluntarily injected herself into the public discourse [and] invited public attention, comment, and criticism.”
As a public figure, the judge said Copeland’s case would only succeed if she could show “actual malice” – and he said had not done so in her court filings.
“The actual-malice standard shields publishers from liability for mistakes, while still preserving defamation remedies where the publisher knew that he was publishing falsehoods or deliberately ignored the truth,” the judge wrote. “Copeland fails to clear that high bar. The complaint offers only conclusions and speculation of ill will, not allegations of actual malice.”
For similar reasons, the judge also tossed out other allegations of the case, including that the documentary inflicted emotional distress and misappropriated her name and likeness. But the entire ruling came “without prejudice,” meaning Copeland can refile her case with changes in an effort to fix the problems Judge Bibas identified: “Perhaps Copeland can cure these defects.”
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: Daddy Yankee sues his ex-wife for $250 million; Jay-Z’s dispute with his former accuser and her lawyer goes on; prosecutors say Taylor Swift tickets were stolen and resold by hackers; and much more.
THE BIG STORY: Daddy Yankee Goes Back To Court
Daddy Yankee’s legal war with ex-wife Mireddys González isn’t over yet.
The pair finalized their divorce last month, but in a lawsuit filed last week in Puerto Rico, the reggaetón superstar (Ramón Luis Ayala Rodríguez) accused her and her sister Ayeicha González Castellanos of mismanaging two of his companies to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.
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“Mireddys and Ayeicha … proceeded to concentrate in themselves a greater power than authorized and, together, made negligent and selfish decisions that were detrimental to both the companies and [Daddy Yankee] in his personal capacity and as an artist,” the star’s lawyers wrote.
The lawsuit follows, and often echoes, the allegations Yankee made in December when he sought an injunction against González – namely that the two women had withdrawn $100 million from his companies’ bank accounts without authorization. Now, Yankee claims that after regaining control of the companies, his team discovered many new irregularities, including the “disappearance” of key records.
For all the details, go read the full story from Billboard’s Griselda Flores.
Other top stories this week…
FIGHT GOES ON – Jay-Z’s rape accuser is standing by her story, according to court documents filed last week — directly contradicting a recent lawsuit in which the superstar claimed the woman had admitted to fabricating the allegations. Later in the week, the star’s lawyers filed sworn statements from private investigators to whom the accuser allegedly recanted, and suggested that she and her lawyer should sit for depositions.
HACKED TICKETS – Members of a “cybercrime crew” stole more than 900 tickets to the Taylor Swift Eras Tour and other events and then resold them for more $635,000 in illegal profit, according to charges handed down by New York prosecutors. The tour, which wrapped in December with a record-shattering haul of more than $2 billion in face-value ticket sales over a two-year run, spawned an infamously pricy resale market – something the accused fraudsters were allegedly able to exploit.
“FLOWERS” UPDATE – Miley Cyrus seems unlikely to immediately escape a copyright lawsuit filed over allegations that her Grammy-winning “Flowers” infringed the Bruno Mars song “When I Was Your Man.” At a court hearing, a Los Angeles federal judge indicated that would likely deny a motion to dismiss the case filed last year by attorneys for Cyrus.
SHEERAN CASE AT SCOTUS – The legal battle over whether Ed Sheeran’s “Thinking Out Loud” infringed Marvin Gaye‘s “Let’s Get It On” has reached the U.S. Supreme Court. In a petition for certiorari filed last week, a company that owns a stake in the rights to Gaye’s 1973 song urged the justices to overturn a November ruling by a lower appeals court that rejected the lawsuit, arguing that “the rights of thousands of legacy musical composers and artists” were at stake in the case.
ANTITRUST SHOWDOWN – A lyrics service called LyricFind filed an antitrust lawsuit against Musixmatch, claiming that the larger rival has reached an exclusive licensing deal with Warner Music Group (WMG) that’s “unprecedented in the music industry” and is aimed at securing an illegal monopoly for providing lyrics to streamers like Spotify.
Miley Cyrus seems unlikely to immediately escape a copyright lawsuit filed over allegations that her Grammy-winning “Flowers” infringed the Bruno Mars song “When I Was Your Man.”
A Los Angeles federal judge “repeatedly indicated” at a live court hearing Monday that he would likely deny a motion to dismiss the case filed last year by attorneys for Cyrus, according to a report by Rolling Stone.
In that motion, the singer had argued that the plaintiff in the case – not Mars himself, but an financial entity called Tempo Music Investments that bought out the rights of one of his co-writers – lacked the necessary legal “standing” to pursue its claims.
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But at the hearing, Judge Dean D. Pregerson appeared skeptical, according to RS – at times seeming to endorse arguments from Tempo’s lawyers that granting the motion would gut longstanding music industry practices. He reportedly asked Cyrus’ lawyer why anyone would buy partial shares in songs “knowing they could never enforce it” without the consent of all the other songwriters.
The judge did not immediately decide the motion at Monday’s hearing and will instead issue a written ruling in the weeks or months ahead.
“Flowers,” which spent eight weeks atop the Hot 100, has been linked to “Your Man” since it was released in January 2023. Many fans immediately saw it as an “answer song,” with lyrics that clearly referenced Mars’ song. The reason, according to internet sleuths, was that “Your Man” was a favorite of Cyrus’ ex-husband Liam Hemsworth – and her allusions were a nod to their divorce.
When “Flowers” was first released, legal experts told Billboard that Cyrus was likely not violating copyrights simply by using similar lyrics to fire back at the earlier song – a time-honored music industry tradition utilized by songs ranging from Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama” to countless rap diss records.
But Tempo sued in September, claiming “Flowers” had lifted numerous elements beyond the clap-back lyrics, including “melodic and harmonic material,” “pitch ending pattern,” and “bass-line structure.” Tempo, which had purchased a fractional share in the song from co-writer Philip Lawrence, argued it was “undeniable” that Cyrus’ hit “would not exist” if not for “Your Man.”
In her first response in November, attorneys for Miley said that the total lack of involvement from Mars and the song’s two other co-writers was not some procedural quirk in the case, but rather a “fatal flaw” that required the outright dismissal of the lawsuit.
“Plaintiff unambiguously [says] that it obtained its claimed rights in the ‘When I Was Your Man’ copyright from only one of that musical composition’s four co-authors,” wrote Peter Anderson, the star’s lead attorney. “That is a fatal and incurable defect in plaintiff’s claim.”
In a statement at the time, Tempo Music lead counsel Alex Weingarten told Billboard that the argument from Cyrus was “intellectually dishonest” and that the group clearly had standing to pursue the lawsuit: “They’re seeking to make bogus technical arguments because they don’t have an actual substantive defense to the case.”
If the motion is denied, lawyers for Cyrus will likely shift focus to those substantive arguments. In previous filings, they have argued that the two songs have “striking differences” and that any similarities are not covered by copyright law: “The songwriter defendants categorically deny copying, and the allegedly copied elements are random, scattered, unprotected ideas and musical building blocks.”
The legal battle over whether Ed Sheeran’s “Thinking Out Loud” infringed Marvin Gaye‘s “Let’s Get It On” has reached the U.S. Supreme Court more than a decade after Sheeran’s hit was released.
In a petition filed last week, a company that owns a stake in the rights to Gaye’s 1973 song urged the justices to overturn a November ruling by a lower appeals court, which said Sheeran had done nothing wrong and that the two tracks shared only “fundamental musical building blocks.”
The company, Structured Asset Sales (SAS), says that the ruling unfairly restricted its allegations to written sheet music rather than all elements included in Gaye’s iconic recorded version. That thorny issue, which has also cropped up in other major cases over “Blurred Lines” and “Stairway To Heaven” in recent years, must finally be resolved by the high court, the company says.
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“The rights of thousands of legacy musical composers and artists, of many of the most beloved and enduring pieces of popular music, are at the center of the controversy,” SAS’s lawyers write in the petition, filed with the high court Thursday (March 6).
Such an appeal, known as a petition for a writ of certiorari, faces long odds. The Supreme Court takes less than 2% of the roughly 7,000 cases it receives each year, hearing only the disputes it deems most important to the national legal landscape.
Sheeran has faced multiple lawsuits over “Thinking,” a 2014 track co-written with Amy Wadge that reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and ultimately spent 58 weeks on the chart. He was first sued by the daughter of Ed Townsend, who co-wrote the famed 1973 tune with Gaye. That case ended in a high-profile jury verdict that cleared Sheeran of any wrongdoing.
Thursday’s petition came in a separate case filed by SAS, an entity owned by industry executive David Pullman that controls a different stake in Townsend’s copyrights to the legendary song. That suit was rejected in November by the federal Second Circuit appeals court, which said the lawsuit was essentially seeking “a monopoly over a combination of two fundamental musical building blocks.”
“The four-chord progression at issue—ubiquitous in pop music—even coupled with a syncopated harmonic rhythm, is too well-explored to meet the originality threshold that copyright law demands,” the appeals court wrote. “Overprotecting such basic elements would threaten to stifle creativity and undermine the purpose of copyright law.”
Appealing that ruling to the Supreme Court last week, attorneys for SAS argued the lower court had botched the case by relying only on the “deposit copy” — a bare-bones written version of music sent to the U.S. Copyright Office for many old songs. Doing so was not only legally erroneous but also out of step with reality, the company’s lawyers wrote.
“Nobody who understands the music industry would ever suggest that songwriters consult the deposit copies on file with the Copyright Office as part of their creative (or clearance) process,” SAS wrote to the justices. “To the extent they are aware of the music that preceded them, it is from hearing it on the radio, in movies, television and—for the last quarter century—the Internet.”
That ruling was even more legally problematic, SAS’s lawyers write, because it came in the wake of a Supreme Court decision last year that said courts should afford less deference to legal guidance from federal agencies. By siding with Sheeran — and an agency interpretation from the Copyright Office — SAS says the lower appeals court “openly defied this Court.”
Sheeran’s attorneys can file a response brief in the weeks ahead. The court will decide whether or not to hear the case at some point in the next several months.