Legal News
Page: 67
A man who unsuccessfully sued Cardi B after his giant back tattoo was unwittingly photoshopped into one of her album covers has agreed to repay a whopping $350,000 in legal bills that the superstar spent defeating his lawsuit.
Months after a jury rejected Kevin Brophy’s case against Cardi, his lawyers told a federal judge Monday (June 12) that he would not only reimburse the money that the rapper had dropped on her attorneys but also voluntarily end his efforts to revive the case and waive any chance at a future appeal.
Why would he do all that? Possibly because Cardi’s lawyers were gearing up to formally demand that he repay her attorneys’ fees — a prize to which she was potentially eligible after beating his accusations in court. Under that process, Cardi and her pricey team of lawyers could have won even more than $350,000.
“The parties now have reached an agreement avoiding the necessity of defendants’ motion for attorney’s fees and application to tax costs,” the two sides wrote in Monday’s filing, hinting at the looming threat of such a fee motion from Cardi’s team.
Attorneys for both sides declined to comment on the agreement when reached by Billboard on Monday.
Brophy sued Cardi in 2017 for millions in damages, claiming he was “devastated, humiliated and embarrassed” by the cover of Cardi’s Gangsta Bitch. The image featured the then-rising star taking a swig of a large beer, staring directly into the camera with her legs spread wide and holding a man’s head while he appears to perform oral sex on her.
The actual man in the image was a model who had consented to the shoot, but a giant tattoo on the man’s back belonged to Brophy. Unbeknownst to Cardi, a freelance graphic designer had typed “back tattoos” into Google Image Search, found one that fit (Brophy’s) and superimposed it onto the model’s body.
Brophy’s lawsuit claimed Cardi and others involved in the cover had used his likeness without his consent and also violated his right to privacy by casting him in a “false light” that was “highly offensive.” Cardi’s lawyers called the allegations “sheer fantasy” and “vastly overblown,” arguing that nobody would have recognized a relatively unknown man based merely on his back.
During a four-day trial in October, Cardi took the stand to defend herself. When examined by Brophy’s attorney, A. Barry Cappello, things repeatedly got heated between the two — so much so that at one point the judge cleared the jury, told Cappello he had “totally crossed the line” and threatened to declare a mistrial.
At the end of the trial, the jury agreed with the superstar’s defenses, clearing Cardi of all Brophy’s claims. Brophy later asked the judge to throw out the verdict for a lack of evidence, but the judge denied that motion in December. Brophy then filed a motion in January seeking a new trial, arguing that the star “engaged in theatrics” on the witness stand and deprived him of a fair trial.
Under Monday’s agreement, that motion will be withdrawn, and Brophy will “waive and irrevocably relinquish” any chance to challenge the verdict on appeal. In return, Cardi’s attorneys will similarly waive their right to file a motion formally seeking an award of attorneys’ fees.
A Grammy Award-winning composer has dropped her closely-watched lawsuit against YouTube over access to its anti-piracy tools like Content ID, just a day before it had been set to go to trial — and weeks after a federal judge gutted the case by refusing to let it move forward as a class action.
Maria Schneider spent years litigating her lawsuit, which claimed that YouTube had become a “hotbed of piracy” because it provided effective content tools only to “powerful copyright owners” like record labels and not to “ordinary owners” like artists and songwriters.
But on Sunday (June 11), with a jury trial scheduled to kick off on Monday morning), lawyers for both sides told a federal judge that they had agreed to end the case without a decision: “In light of the stipulation of dismissal of all claims with prejudice, the jury trial set for June 12, 2023, is vacated,” Judge James Donato wrote. “The case is closed.”
The sudden end to the case came just weeks after Judge Donato issued a crucial ruling that dramatically reduced the scope of the lawsuit: That Schneider could not team up with tens of thousands of other rightsholders who she claims suffered similar harm from YouTube’s policies.
Schneider quickly moved to appeal that ruling and postpone the trial, arguing that it would “gravely undermine” the goals of her lawsuit. But a federal appeals court denied that motion on Friday.
Faced with a jury trial they had warned would be “enormously wasteful,” Schneider’s lawyers dropped their case. Neither side immediately returned requests for more information about how the resolution of the litigation was reached, including specific details about any kind of settlement agreement.
Filed in 2020, Schneider’s lawsuit claims that YouTube (owned by Google parent Alphabet) forces songwriters and other smaller rights holders to use “vastly inferior and time-consuming manual means” of policing infringement, allowing piracy of their material to flourish on the platform.
For its part, YouTube says it’s 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 rights holders.
But in a May 22 ruling, Judge Donato refused to “certify” the case as a class action. Under federal law, class-action accusers must share very similar legal concerns — and the judge said Schneider’s fellow rights holders would have widely different cases against YouTube.
Following that ruling, Schneider quickly moved to postpone the trial. But at a hearing days after the decision, 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; OK. It’s showtime.”
In a June 5 emergency petition to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Schneider’s lawyers demanded the appeals court put the case on ice while she filed an appeal on the class certification issue. They argued that a “brief” pause would prevent the judge’s “last-minute, haphazard and erroneous” ruling from derailing a case with important implications.
“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.
But in a ruling published on Friday evening, the Ninth Circuit rejected those arguments: “The court, in its discretion, denies the petition for permission to appeal,” the court wrote. “Petitioners’ emergency motion for a stay is denied as moot.”
Schneider and her lawyers still could have proceeded to trial against YouTube, litigating the case simply on behalf of her and another plaintiff. But they had strongly indicated in court filings that they did not want to proceed to the trial without class-action status.
A Tennessee man pleaded guilty Friday to helping two other men charged with fatally shooting rapper Young Dolph in a daytime ambush at a Memphis bakery.
Jermarcus Johnson, 26, pleaded guilty to three counts of accessory after the fact. Judge Lee Coffee approved a plea deal with prosecutors, allowing him to avoid trial. He could testify at a future trial in the November 2021 killing of Young Dolph, whose real name was Adolph Thornton Jr.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
Johnson is the first of four defendants to plead guilty or be convicted in the Young Dolph shooting, which rattled Memphis and shook the entertainment world. The 36-year-old rapper, label owner and producer was buying cookies near his boyhood home in Memphis when he was gunned down by two men who drove up to the bakery in a stolen Mercedes Benz, authorities said.
Johnson acknowledged helping the two shooting suspects communicate by cellphone after the killing while they were on the run from authorities and helping one of them communicate with his probation officer after the killing.
During questioning by prosecutor Paul Hagerman, Johnson acknowledged taking possession of car a from shooting suspect Justin Johnson, his half brother. The car was not the one tied to the killing, Hagerman said. Jermarcus Johnson also identified a photo in which Justin Johnson was wearing the same clothing as one of the two shooters accused of gunning down Young Dolph the day the rapper was killed.
Hagerman said Jermarcus Johnson had no role in the actual killing of Young Dolph, but he was one of “multiple players” doing different things in connection with it.
Hagerman said after the hearing that dealing with a case with several defendants is “a little bit like chess.”
“You’ve got to set up your pieces,” he said.
Jermarcus Johnson was initially charged with the more serious offence of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, an indictment said. Jermarcus Johnson helped Justin Johnson communicate with the other suspect, Cornelius Smith, the indictment said.
Jermarcus Johnson’s lawyer, Josh Corman, told reporters his client was an unwilling participant who was dragged into the aftermath of the killing.
“Sometimes it’s one of those lessons of, you have to be careful who you know and who you associate with,” Corman said. “In this case, it was a half brother of his who showed up to his apartment one day and had a phone and a car.”
Justin Johnson and Smith have pleaded not guilty to charges including first-degree murder. The fourth man accused in the indictment, Hernandez Govan, also has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder. Govan is accused of arranging the killing.
A motive for the killing has not been disclosed.
Young Dolph was known in Memphis for his charitable works and his success as an independent musical artist and businessman. When he was killed, Young Dolph was in the city to visit a sick relative and hand out Thanksgiving turkeys at a church.
After his death, Memphis named a street after him and the Memphis Grizzlies of the NBA honored him during a game. Murals of the rapper have been painted around the city and a pop-up museum featuring him was opened earlier this year.
The bakery, Makeda’s Homemade Cookies, became an impromptu memorial site for the slain rapper. It was closed for months after the shooting, but has since reopened.
Justin Johnson and Smith are being held in jail. Govan was given a $90,000 bond based on safety and health issues and he is on house arrest.
Johnson faces six to 12 years in prison at sentencing at a later date.
A federal appeals court has issued a first-of-its-kind ruling that says blasting music with “sexually graphic” and “violently misogynistic” lyrics in a workplace could violate federal discrimination laws.
Reviving a lawsuit against an apparel company that played songs like Too $hort‘s “Blowjob Betty” and Eminem‘s “Stan” at a Nevada warehouse, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled Wednesday (June 9) that the music had potentially created a “hostile or abusive environment” for female employees.
“Blasted from commercial-strength speakers placed throughout the warehouse, the music overpowered operational background noise and was nearly impossible to escape,” the appeals court wrote. “In turn, the music allegedly served as a catalyst for abusive conduct by male employees, who frequently pantomimed sexually graphic gestures, yelled obscenities, made sexually explicit remarks, and openly shared pornographic videos.”
The employer, S&S Activewear, argued the music didn’t constitute illegal bias under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, partly because it had been equally offensive to both men and women. And last year, a federal trial judge agreed, calling the case “fatally flawed” and dismissing it on those grounds.
But in Wednesday’s decision, the Ninth Circuit called that an “absurd interpretation” of the statute — and one that would create a “gaping hole” in discrimination law for any company that chose to be an “equal opportunity harasser.”
The appeals court said it was the first time it had ever ruled on the issue of “music-as-harassment” under the Civil Rights Act. But the judges said that sexist songs should be treated no differently than other situations where a workplace is “polluted with insult and intimidation.”
“[Female employees were] forced to tolerate the music and the toxic environment as a condition of continued employment,” the court wrote. “Whether sung, shouted, or whispered, blasted over speakers or relayed face-to-face, sexist epithets can offend and may transform a workplace into a hostile environment that violates Title VII.”
Importantly, Wednesday’s ruling does not say that S&S definitely violated the law; rather, it says the allegations against the company could have merit if they are eventually proven, and thus that the case should not have been dismissed so quickly. The case will now return to a lower court for more litigation and an eventual trial.
An attorney for S&S did not immediately return a request for comment on the decision.
The case was filed in 2020 by Stephanie Sharp and seven other women who worked at S&S’s Nevada warehouse. As examples of the music they were allegedly forced to listen to, they cited “Blowjob Betty,” including its lyrics about a woman “who dies because of swallowing semen in her windpipe.” They also cited “Stan” and its lyrics about “placing a pregnant woman in the trunk of a vehicle and then driving the vehicle into a river … for the purpose of drowning her.”
Though the songs at issue in the case were mostly hip-hop, Wednesday’s ruling reviving that lawsuit was careful to stress that it was not targeting rap music specifically.
“It is beyond our purview to pass judgment on the appropriateness of music in the workplace writ large,” the court wrote. “Nor is it our objective to ascribe misogyny to any particular musical genre.”
In a statement to Billboard on Friday, lead plaintiffs’ attorney Mark Mausert said he and his clients were “very pleased” with a ruling that used “common sense” to reach the right result: “This opinion will prevent a lot of sexual harassment at a multitude of workplaces,” Mausert said. “It is well written and is pretty much a tour de force of Ninth Circuit law.”
Read the Ninth Circuit’s entire ruling here:
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 […]