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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: Lawyers for Fetty Wap battle with prosecutors ahead of his sentencing over federal drug charges; the Supreme Court issues a major copyright ruling on Andy Warhol’s images of Prince; Ed Sheeran wins another lawsuit over “Let’s Get It On”; and much more.
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THE BIG STORY: Fetty Wap Faces Drug Sentencing
With Fetty Wap facing sentencing this week for his conviction on federal drug charges, the rapper’s lawyers and prosecutors are battling over how much prison time he should receive — and in the process, they’ve dipped into one of music’s biggest legal controversies.
Attorneys for the rapper, who pleaded guilty in August to participating in “a multimillion-dollar bicoastal drug distribution organization,” asked a judge last week to sentence him to just five years — the minimum under the law. They say he only turned to crime to support family members as his touring income dried up during the COVID-19 pandemic.
But prosecutors quickly fired back with a darker story: Of a successful musician who had already earned millions but chose to “supplement his income” by selling “drugs he knew would ruin lives.” And notably, they cited Fetty’s music itself, claiming he should receive a harsher punishment in part because he used his songs to “glamorize the drug trade.”
“Before his arrest, the defendant became famous singing about his experience cooking crack cocaine, selling drugs and making substantial money from those illegal endeavors,” prosecutors wrote. “Young people who admire the defendant and are considering selling drugs need to be sent a message.”
If you’ve been following music law for the past year, you’ll know that’s a controversial move.
After a high-profile gang indictment against Young Thug in Atlanta, the use of rap lyrics in criminal cases has come under increasing scrutiny. Critics say references to drugs and violence are stock elements of hip-hop and should not be treated literally — and that by doing so, prosecutors infringe on free speech and sway courts with unfair evidence, with predictably disproportionate harm inflicted on Black artists.
Lawmakers in California recently enacted a law that sharply restricts the practice, and legislators in New York seem poised to pass a similar bill later this year. A federal bill to limit when lyrics can be used in cases like the one against Fetty Wap was re-introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives last month but faces a less clear path to passage than the state-level measures.
To get the full story, including the actual legal documents filed by both sides, go read our full articles on the sentencing recommendations from Fetty Wap and from prosecutors.
Other top stories…
SCOTUS RULES ON WARHOL & FAIR USE – Ruling on a case that record labels and publishers called “critical to the American music industry,” the U.S. Supreme Court said that Andy Warhol did not make “fair use” of a photographer’s copyrights when he used her images of Prince to create one of his distinctive screen prints. The ruling essentially maintained the status quo for music companies, who feared that a decision for Warhol could have disrupted industry practices for sampling, or possibly given legal cover for AI companies to use copyrighted songs.
JIMI HENDRIX DISPUTES HEADS TO UK – A transatlantic legal battle between Jimi Hendrix’s estate and his former bandmates — over control of the rights to music created by the trio’s Jimi Hendrix Experience — is going to be fought primarily in London for now, after a U.S. federal judge ruled that she would defer to the British courts.
ED SHEERAN WINS AGAIN – Less than two weeks after Ed Sheeran won a blockbuster jury trial over whether his “Thinking Out Loud” infringed Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On,” a federal judge dismissed a second, closely-related copyright case accusing him of copying the same iconic song.
YOUTUBE WON’T FACE CLASS ACTION – A federal judge dealt a major blow to a lawsuit that claims YouTube enables piracy by restricting access to copyright tools like Content ID, refusing to allow the case to proceed as a class action that could have included tens of thousands of rightsholders.
FACIAL-RECOGNITION FIGHT CONTINUES – The owner of Madison Square Garden Entertainment filed a new legal action demanding access to the phone records of a New York state liquor investigator, opening a new front in a sprawling legal war over the use of facial recognition technology to ban lawyers from venues.
The owner of Madison Square Garden has filed a new legal action demanding access to the phone records of a New York state liquor investigator — the same state official who the company reportedly hired a private detective to tail.
In a petition filed Monday, attorneys for MSG Entertainment (MSGE) asked a New York judge to force Verizon to hand over cellphone records from Charles Stravalle, an investigator for the State Liquor Authority (SLA). The filing says the records will prove MSGE’s allegations that the SLA has unfairly targeted the company with a “sham” investigation over its controversial move to use facial-recognition technology to ban opposing lawyers from its venues.
“The SLA is misusing its enforcement powers at the behest of politically influential lawyers,” MSGE’s attorneys wrote. “Angered and motivated, those lawyers prevailed on the SLA to conduct an inherently compromised investigation of MSG.”
According to MSGE’s filing, already-revealed texts between those same lawyers and Stravalle “show that the investigation was compromised from the start” — and MSGE now wants access to the rest of them.
“MSG needs the phone records it subpoenaed from respondent Verizon to be able to more fully understand how deep this collusion and corruption goes, and how high the deck was stacked against MSG from the start,” the company wrote.
In a statement to Billboard, MSGE’s attorney Jim Walden said: “We believe the incriminating evidence revealed by the communications between the SLA and the plaintiff’s attorneys is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what our motion and subsequent subpoenas will uncover. We look forward to exposing the SLA’s abuses and bringing the facts to light.”
A rep for the SLA did not return a request for comment from the agency and Stravalle. A rep for Verizon did not immediately respond to a request for comment, including whether or not it would comply with the subpoena.
The new filing comes two months after the New York Times reported that MSGE and Dolan had hired a private detective to track Stravalle after he was assigned to work on the SLA’s probe into the company.
It also comes amid an increasingly sprawling legal battle facing MSGE and Dolan, who also own Radio City Music Hall, the Beacon Theater and other live music venues throughout New York City.
The fight began last year when MSGE enacted new rules to ban attorneys who are suing the company from attending events at Madison Square Garden and other MSGE venues. When MSGE began enforcing those rules using facial recognition technology, it drew public scrutiny and backlash from lawmakers like State Senator Liz Kruger, who expressed concern that MSGE’s rules were “discriminatory and retaliatory.”
In November, the SLA began investigating whether the lawyer ban violates state alcohol laws, which require businesses to be “open to the public” — a probe that could result in the revocation of MSGE’s liquor licenses. In January, New York Attorney General Letitia James requested information about the ban, warning that it might violate local, state and federal human rights laws. And in March, state lawmakers threatened to revoke Madison Square Garden’s property tax exemption which is valued at roughly $43 million a year.
Through it all, MSGE and Dolan have remained defiant. In a January television interview in which he threatened to stop serving alcohol at Madison Square Garden, Dolan defended his company’s actions: “If you’re suing us, we’re just asking you please don’t come until you’re done with your argument with us, and yes we’re using facial recognition to enforce that.”
Monday’s new petition is Dolan’s latest legal effort to fight back against the SLA investigation. He previously sued to challenge the validity of the investigation itself, but the case was tossed out in April after a judge ruled that MSGE could not bring such a case until the SLA had actually issued a decision. MSGE is currently appealing that ruling to a state appeals court.
Read the entire petition from MSGE here:
A federal judge on Monday (May 22) dealt a major blow to a lawsuit that claims YouTube enables piracy by restricting access to copyright tools like Content ID, refusing to allow the case to proceed as a class action that could have included tens of thousands of rightsholders.
The lawsuit, filed by a composer named Maria Schneider, claims that YouTube has become a “hotbed of piracy” because the platform provides “powerful copyright owners” like record labels with Content ID to block and monetize unauthorized uses of their content, but fails to do the same for “ordinary owners.”
But in his ruling on Monday, Judge James Donato said that Schneider could not team up with tens of thousands of other rightsholders who she claims suffered similar harm from YouTube’s policies, dramatically reducing the scope of the lawsuit.
Cases can only be “certified” as class actions if the various accusers share similar complaints against the defendant. And in Schneider’s case, Judge Donato said different rightsholders would have very 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. “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.”
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.”
With a trial date looming next month, attorneys for Schneider had urged Judge Donato to let the case move forward as a class action. An expert retained by her legal team suggested that the class “at a minimum” would include between 10,000 and 20,000 aggrieved copyright owners.
“The Copyright Act does not countenance such blatant disregard of individual artists’ intellectual property rights,” her attorneys wrote. “Class actions were created for this institutionalized misbehavior that relies upon the disincentives and lack of resources for a lawsuit absent collective action. A class action is the superior method through which YouTube’s participation in and facilitation of copyright infringement can be held to account.”
But in Monday’s ruling, Judge Donato strongly disagreed. He said the many individual claims against YouTube would require “highly individualized inquiries into the merits,” including a case-by-case assessment of whether YouTube possibly had a valid license to those particular songs.
“Whether YouTube has a license for a particular work will be a matter of intense inquiry at trial,” the judge wrote. “The answer to this inquiry will depend upon facts and circumstances unique to each work and copyright claimant.”
Monday’s order won’t end the case, but it will now proceed to trial based only on copyrights owned by Schneider and two other plaintiffs (Uniglobe Entertainment and AST Publishing). The lawsuit is scheduled for a June 12 trial, though it’s unclear if that date will be changed in the wake of Monday’s decision.
An attorney for Schneider and a representative for YouTube did not immediately return requests for comment on Monday’s order.
Federal prosecutors want a judge to sentence Fetty Wap to as much as nine years in prison after the rapper pleaded guilty last year to drug charges, citing lyrics they say “glamorize the drug trade” and arguing that the court needs to “send a message” to kids.
The filing came just a day after lawyers for “Trap Queen” star (real name Willie Junior Maxwell II) asked for just five years, arguing that he only turned to crime to support family members as his touring income dried up during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In their own brief on Thursday, prosecutors told a darker story: Of a successful musician who had already earned millions but chose to “supplement his income” by selling “drugs he knew would ruin lives.” In a particularly notable move, they pointed to Fetty’s music itself, arguing he had used his “fame, sizeable platform and influence to glamorize the drug trade.”
“Before his arrest, the defendant became famous singing about his experience cooking crack cocaine, selling drugs and making substantial money from those illegal endeavors,” prosecutors wrote, also citing a recent song that they says contains coded references to drugs. “Even after his arrest and while awaiting trial in this very serious federal drug case, the defendant continued to glamorize the drug trade.”
The use of rap lyrics in criminal cases is a controversial tactic. Critics say references to drugs and violence are stock elements of hip hop and should not be treated literally — and that by doing so, prosecutors infringe on free speech and sway courts with unfair evidence. Lawmakers in California recently enacted a law that sharply restricts the practice, and a similar bill has been proposed to do so in federal cases.
But in Thursday’s filing, prosecutors repeatedly referenced Fetty Waps works. Pointing to “Trap Queen” – a song that reached No. 2 on the Hot 100 – they claimed the rapper had “admitted” to a probation officer that it was an “ode to a former girlfriend who assisted him a cocaine base distribution operation.” They also cited the music video for that song, claiming Fetty had “enlisted young children who stood behind him while he idealized selling drugs.”
Now, with the rapper facing a prison sentence for selling drugs, prosecutors said the judge has a “responsibility to send a clear, unambiguous deterrent message” to fans of his music.
“Young people who admire the defendant and are considering selling drugs need to be sent a message that selling drugs is not a glamorous lifestyle and, if they participate in that trade, they will receive lengthy prison sentences,” prosecutors wrote. “That message is even more important in this case, as the defendant has promoted and profited from his drug dealing through his fame and music.”
Fetty Wap was arrested in October 2021 at Rolling Loud New York, after prosecutors unveiled an indictment against him and five others. Prosecutors claimed group had shipped more than 100 kilograms of the drugs from California and distributed them on Long Island, contributing to “the addiction and overdose epidemic we have seen time and time again tear people’s lives apart.”
In August, Fetty admitted to participating in the scheme, pleading guilty to a single charge of conspiring to distribute at least 500 grams of cocaine. He faces sentencing next week by U.S. District Judge Joanna Seybert.
The sentence requested by prosecutors on Thursday — between 87 and 108 months – is the same as what’s suggested by federal sentencing guidelines. But it came just a day after attorneys for Fetty Wap said he should face only five years, the minimum sentence allowed under the law.
In that filing, his lawyers said the rapper “realizes the terrible mistake he made” and is “truly sorry for the loss and hurt he has caused.” They argued he only turned to crime amid the pandemic, as his touring income dried up: “Desperate to keep up with his financial obligations, Mr. Maxwell became involved in the instant offense for a few months in the spring of 2020.”
In their own filing on Thursday, prosecutors said Fetty was perhaps not quite as reformed as his attorneys had claimed. They cited an incident last summer in which the rapper’s bail was revoked for pointing a gun and threatening to kill someone on a FaceTime call in which he called someone a “rat.”
“The defendant’s conduct while on bail is also extremely troubling,” the prosecutors wrote. “While none of us is clairvoyant, the defendant’s possession of a firearm and threatening conduct while on bail is a concerning predictor of future behavior.”
An attorney for Fetty Wap did not return a request for comment. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to comment.
A transatlantic legal battle between Jimi Hendrix’s estate and his former bandmates is going to be fought primarily in London for now, after a U.S. federal judge ruled that she would defer to the British courts.
The two dueling camps — Hendrix’s estate and Sony Music on one side and the estates of bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell on the other — have each filed their own lawsuit on opposite sides of the Atlantic over control of the rights to music created by the trio’s Jimi Hendrix Experience.
After a year of jockeying over which case should take precedence, a Manhattan federal judge ruled Tuesday that it should be Redding and Mitchell’s UK lawsuit. She pointed out that the English litigation had kicked off nearly a month earlier than the American case, and that a British appeals court had already ruled that their case could move forward.
“The litigation centers on estate matters in England, general release documents located in England, and copyright and intellectual property rights under English law,” Judge Ronnie Abrams wrote. “It can thus hardly be said that the courts of England are not an adequate forum.”
Hendrix teamed up with Redding and Mitchell in 1966 to form the Experience, and the trio went on to release a number of now-iconic songs before Hendrix’s death, including “All Along The Watchtower,” which spent nine weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1968 and peaked at No. 20.
The current fight kicked off in 2021, when Redding and Mitchell’s heirs sent a letter in the UK claiming they own a stake in Hendrix’s music and arguing that they’re owed millions in royalties. The Hendrix estate and Sony responded a month later by filing their own lawsuit in New York federal court, arguing that Redding and Mitchell signed away their rights shortly after the legendary rocker died in 1970, in exchange for “significant monetary consideration.”
But for over a year, the two sides have been duking it out over which case should proceed first. The Hendrix estate and Sony say the contractual releases, which will play a central role in the case, were all signed in New York as part of probate proceedings in that state. But Redding and Mitchell’s heirs have claimed the estate is merely trying to “circumvent” English courts to win a friendly judge in America.
“Plaintiffs are merely trying to win the race to the courthouse because they apparently believe this court will be more sympathetic to their claim than the English court before which it is now pending,” the Redding and Mitchell heirs wrote last year. “Such blatant forum shopping is not entitled to any deference.”
Last month, a London appeals court ruled that the U.K. case could proceed, regardless of what happened in New York. That ruling said that the New York releases might indeed end up being the “central aspect in the dispute,” but that the British case also dealt with broader issues of English law.
And on Tuesday, Judge Abrams cited that April ruling as a key factor in why she had decided that the New York case could wait until the British case was resolved.
“The London High Court’s lengthy decision finding jurisdiction over the English action underscores the appropriateness of that forum, and the merits of that action are now being actively litigated in English courts,” the judge wrote. “This action is hereby stayed pending the resolution of defendants’ action in England.”
Neither side’s attorneys immediately returned requests for comment.
Read the entire ruling here:
Lawyers for Fetty Wap are asking a judge to sentence him to five years – the minimum under the law – after he pleaded guilty last year to federal drug charges, arguing that the star rapper committed his crimes only to “financially support others” during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The “Trap Queen” star (real name Willie Junior Maxwell II) has admitted to participating in what prosecutors called “a multimillion-dollar bicoastal drug distribution organization,” pleading guilty in August to a single charge of conspiring to distribute at least 500 grams of cocaine.
Now, with sentencing set for next week, the rapper’s lawyers say he should receive the minimum possible sentence for that conviction, arguing that he “realizes the terrible mistake he made” and is “truly sorry for the loss and hurt he has caused.”
“What makes this case unusual is Mr. Maxwell’s motivation,” his lawyers wrote in a Wednesday (May 18) filing. “Personal gain was not his motivation. Rather, he was motivated by his commitment to financially support others. He now realizes that he does not have to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders.”
Sentencing guidelines call for a prison term ranging from seven and nine years, but in their filing, Fetty Wap’s lawyers say their client deserves less than that because he only turned to crime amid the pandemic, as his touring income dried up but “the bills kept coming in.”
“Suddenly it felt like life was going in reverse and he became ashamed when he began to struggle to keep up the lifestyle that he created for so many. His judgment became impaired,” the rapper’s lawyers wrote. “Desperate to keep up with his financial obligations, Mr. Maxwell became involved in the instant offense for a few months in the spring of 2020.”
Fetty Wap was arrested in October 2021 at Rolling Loud New York, after prosecutors unveiled an indictment against him and five others: Anthony Leonardi, Robert Leonardi, Brian Sullivan, Kavaughn Wiggins and Anthony Cyntje, a New Jersey corrections officer.
At the time, prosecutors said the group had shipped more than 100 kilograms of the drugs from California and distributed them on Long Island, contributing to “the addiction and overdose epidemic we have seen time and time again tear people’s lives apart.”
“The fact that we arrested a chart-topping rap artist and a corrections officer as part of the conspiracy illustrates just how vile the drug trade has become,” FBI assistant director-in-charge Michael J. Driscoll said at the time.
Federal prosecutors have not yet filed their own sentencing recommendations.
Ruling on a case that record labels and publishers have called “critical to the American music industry,” the U.S. Supreme Court said Thursday that Andy Warhol violated a photographer’s copyrights when he used her images of Prince to create one of distinctive screen prints.
By a seven to two vote, the high court ruled that Warhol did not make legal “fair use” of photos of Prince snapped by Lynn Goldsmith, a trailblazing rock-and-roll photographer who also captured images of Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, Patti Smith and Bruce Springsteen.
Attorneys for the late artist has warned that creators must be able to re-use earlier works and that a loss would “chill” creativity. But Justice Sonia Sotomayor said that Warhol had used the photo for a largely the same commercial purpose as Goldsmith – and had offered little compelling reason for doing so.
“Lynn Goldsmith’s original works, like those of other photographers, are entitled to copyright protection, even against famous artists,” the justice wrote.
The ruling is the first time in more than three decades the justices have ruled on how creative works are covered by fair use. The last time the court did so was a landmark 1991 decision upholding 2 Live Crew‘s bawdy parody of Roy Orbison’s “Oh, Pretty Woman.”
Ahead of the decision, the Recording Industry Association of America and the National Music Publishers’ Association had urged the court to adopt Thursday’s more limited vision of fair use. They said the outcome of the case was “critical to the American music industry,” warning that sampling and interpolation might have been regarded as legal fair use under Warhol’s “wide and manipulable” approach.
Warhol created his images in 1984 as artwork for a Vanity Fair article called “Purple Fame,” a sarcastic ode to the then-rising star. To do so, he used a portrait of the star taken in 1981 by Goldsmith. Vanity Fair licensed her image for use in the magazine, but Warhol also created more than a dozen other versions, which were later sold to collectors, displayed in museums and licensed for use without the her consent.
When Prince died suddenly from a drug overdose in 2016, Condé Nast magazine re-used Warhol’s image on the cover of a tribute issue – a prominent display that caught Goldsmith’s attention. After she threatened to sue the Andy Warhol Foundation for copyright infringement, the group filed a preemptive lawsuit to prove that the works were legal.
In 2019, a federal judge ruled that Warhol’s images had “transformed Prince from a vulnerable, uncomfortable person to an iconic, larger-than-life figure.” Such “transformative use” is often the key question when courts decide if something counts as a legal fair use.
But in 2021, a federal appeals court overturned that decision, sending the case to the Supreme Court. The court said that merely adding Warhol’s “signature style” to Goldsmith’s image had not created something “fundamentally different and new.”
In Thursday’s decision, the Supreme Court affirmed that ruling. In a 38-page opinion, Justice Sotomayor repeatedly stressed that the two images had been used for largely the same purpose – to illustrate a magazine with an image of Prince.
“If an original work and secondary use share the same or highly similar purposes, and the secondary use is commercial, the first fair use factor is likely to weigh against fair use, absent some other justification for copying,” the justice wrote.
With such similar purposes, the justice said that simply wanting to offer a new “meaning or message” wasn’t enough on its own.
“Copying might have been helpful to convey a new meaning or message. It often is,” the justice wrote. “But that does not suffice under [fair use]. Nor does it distinguish [Warhol] from a long list of would-be fair users: a musician who finds it helpful to sample another artist’s song to make his own, a playwright who finds it helpful to adapt a novel, or a filmmaker who would prefer to create a sequel or spinoff, to name just a few.”
Read the Supreme Court’s entire decision here.
A Florida man who testified against three former friends who murdered rising rap star XXXTentacion during a robbery five years ago will spend the next two years in prison, a judge ruled Wednesday (May 17).
Circuit Judge Michael Usan sentenced Robert Allen to seven years in prison, with credit for the five years he has already spent at the Broward County jail. He will then spend 20 years on probation. He could have received a life sentence.
Allen, 27, pleaded guilty last year to second-degree murder and testified earlier this year against Michael Boatwright, 27, Dedrick Williams, 27, and Trayvon Newsome, 25. They were convicted of first-degree murder in March and sentenced to life in prison.
During the monthlong trial, prosecutors linked Allen, Boatwright, Williams and Newsome to the June 18, 2018, shooting outside Riva Motorsports in suburban Fort Lauderdale through extensive surveillance video taken inside and outside the store. They stole $50,000 and made cellphone videos hours after the shooting showing them flashing fistfuls of $100 bills.
XXXTentacion, whose legal name was Jahseh Onfroy, had just left Riva Motorsports with a friend when an SUV swerved in front of him and blocked his BMW.
Surveillance video showed two masked gunmen emerging and confronting the 20-year-old singer at the driver’s window, and one shot him repeatedly. They then grabbed a Louis Vuitton bag containing cash XXXTentacion had just withdrawn from the bank, got back into the SUV and sped away. The friend was not harmed.
Boatwright was identified as the primary shooter with Newsome being identified as the other gunman. Williams was the group’s leader and the driver of the SUV.
Allen testified that the men set out that day to commit robberies and went to the motorcycle shop to buy Williams a mask. There they spotted the rapper and decided to make him their target. Allen and Williams went inside the shop to confirm it was him. They then went back to the SUV they had rented, waited for XXXTentacion to emerge and ambushed him.
Ed Sheeran is on a legal winning streak.
Less than two weeks after the star singer won a blockbuster trial over whether his “Thinking Out Loud” infringed Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On,” a federal judge has dismissed a second, closely-related copyright case accusing him of copying the same iconic song.
U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton had ruled last fall that Sheeran would need to face a jury trial in the second case, just like he did in last month’s showdown in Manhattan federal court. But on Tuesday (May 16), the judge issued a surprise decision reversing himself and dismissing the case without a trial.
The reason? The judge said he could rule himself, without the help of a jury, that the combination of simple elements that Sheeran allegedly stole (a chord progression combined with a harmonic rhythm) was not unique enough to be covered by copyright law in the first place.
“It is an unassailable reality that the chord progression and harmonic rhythm in ‘Let’s Get It On’ are so commonplace, in isolation and in combination, that to protect their combination would give ‘Let’s Get It On’ an impermissible monopoly over a basic musical building block,” Judge Stanton wrote, echoing the arguments that Sheeran’s attorneys made throughout last month’s trial.
Sheeran has spent years defending himself over “Thinking Out Loud.” Though the song was a commercial and critical success — it hit No. 2 on the Hot 100 before winning a Grammy award for song of the year — critics and the public quickly noticed similarities with “Let’s Get It On,” with one reviewer calling it an “incredibly obvious successor” to Gaye’s famed slow jam.
Sheeran was first sued by the heirs of Ed Townsend, who co-wrote “Let’s Get It On” with Gaye. It was that long-running case that last month culminated in a high-profile trial in Lower Manhattan, which featured passionate arguments from both sides and saw the singer himself playing the guitar from the witness stand. On May 4, the jurors returned a verdict that Sheeran and his co-writer Amy Wadge had not infringed the earlier song, clearing the star of millions of dollars in potential damages.
But even following that verdict, Sheeran was still facing another case filed by Structured Asset Sales, an entity owned by industry executive David Pullman that owns a separate one-third stake in Townsend’s copyrights. Last October, Judge Stanton ruled in that case that the pop star would need to face a jury of his peers. The judge said there was “no bright-line rule” for deciding whether Gaye’s selection and arrangement of common musical elements were creative enough to warrant copyright protection.
But on Tuesday, less than two weeks after the big verdict in the other case, Judge Stanton made the rare legal decision to “reconsider” his own ruling to send the case to trial.
Among other things, the judge cited the fact that the same combination of chords and harmonic rhythm had appeared in at least four other songs before “Let’s Get It On” was even released, including “Get Off Of My Cloud” by The Rolling Stones and “Georgy Girl” by The Seekers.
“Multiple songwriters have combined the two commonplace elements in the same manner for years,” Judge Stanton wrote. “If their combination were protected and not freely available to songwriters, the goal of copyright law … would be thwarted.”
The judge also cited a recent ruling that dismissed a case against Donald Glover over the Childish Gambino song “This Is America” on similar legal grounds, suggesting that the decision had changed the case law on how federal courts assess such combinations of unprotectable elements.
“To prevent manifest injustice, defendants’ motion for reconsideration is granted,” Judge Stanton wrote. “The Clerk of the Court is directed to close the case.”
In a statement to Billboard following the ruling, Sheeran’s lead attorney Donald S. Zakarin said his team and his client were “truly pleased” with the outcome: “Judge Stanton concluded that Ed Sheeran and Amy Wadge did not infringe, a conclusion consistent with the jury determination that Ed and Amy independently created Thinking Out Loud. This is an important victory not only for Ed and Amy and all songwriters but also for the music loving public.”
Though Tuesday’s ruling is a key victory for the pop star, it’s not the end of the road for the “Thinking Out Loud” litigation. Both the verdict earlier this month and the new ruling can still be appealed, which could take years to resolve. And Structured Asset Sales is also pursuing a third, more novel case based on a different copyright covering Gaye’s more famous recorded version of the song.
In an interview with Billboard following the ruling, Pullman said his company would appeal Tuesday’s decision on multiple grounds. And he stressed that he would continue to litigate the third case, which has been paused while the other cases played out.
“In the new case, in front of a different judge, we have the sound recording in that case,” Pullman said. “Through all these years of litigation, the one thing the defendants have been petrified of is the sound recording. They don’t want to play it for the jury, because then they would see the similarities.”
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: An ugly sexual assault lawsuit against country star Jimmie Allen; a potential agreement between record labels and streamers over AI-generated fake songs; allegations that NYPD cops stole pricey champagne from a music festival; and much more.
THE BIG STORY: Jimmie Allen Sexual Assault Lawsuit
Country music star Jimmie Allen was hit with a civil lawsuit last week containing some truly ugly accusations: That he had repeatedly sexually harassed and raped a woman on his management team, and that her company then fired her when she complained.
In a complaint filed in Tennessee federal court, the anonymous “Jane Doe” accuser alleged that Allen “manipulated and used his power” over her job as a day-to-day manager in order to “sexually harass and abuse her” over a period of 18 months from 2020 to 2022.
Months later, when she says she was “on the verge of a nervous breakdown and considered committing suicide” and chose to disclose the problem to her employers — management firm Wide Open Music and founder Ash Bowers — she says she was promptly fired in retaliation.
Allen denied any wrongdoing, admitting to a sexual relationship with his accuser but saying it had been consensual. Bowers, too, strongly refuted the claims — saying his company had quickly ended its relationship with Allen after learning of the relationship with his accuser
But the fallout was quick: Allen’s record label, BBR Music Group, announced hours later that it had suspended its work with the singer; the next day, his current management company, The Familie, and booking agency, UTA, both announced they were doing the same.
For more on the Jimmie Allen lawsuit, including access to the full legal documents filed in the case, go read our full story.
Other top stories…
MUSIC AI ON CAPITOL HILL – At a Senate hearing over potential regulation for artificial intelligence, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) grilled Sam Altman, CEO of the company behind ChatGPT, over AI’s impact on the music industry — including whether music AI platforms should pay artists whose works are used to train the machines. “There has to be compensation to that artist,” Blackburn told Altman.
A TAKEDOWN SYSTEM FOR AI? – The major labels are in talks with Spotify and other streamers to create an informal process to deal with AI-generated soundalikes, similar to last month’s infamous “Fake Drake” song. The proposed system would operate similarly to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s notice-and-takedown process but would cite name-and-likeness rights rather than federal copyrights.
MARILYN MANSON CASE GUTTED – A Los Angeles judge dismissed much of Marilyn Manson’s defamation lawsuit against his ex-fiance, Evan Rachel Wood, ruling that many of his claims were barred under a California law aimed at protecting free speech. Manson’s case claimed that Wood orchestrated a conspiracy of false abuse accusations to destroy his career.
ELECTRIC ZOO CHAMPAGNE HEIST – Three NYPD detectives were hit with criminal charges over allegations that they stole nearly $3,000 worth of Jay-Z’s Ace of Spades brand champagne from the VIP area during last year’s Electric Zoo festival.
TIDAL CASE DISMISSED – A judge tossed out a lawsuit against Jack Dorsey and his Block Inc. over its 2021 acquisition of majority ownership in Jay-Z’s Tidal. The court ruled that Dorsey and Block didn’t violate their fiduciary duty to investors even though they made a “terrible business decision” to buy the failing streamer — a decision made after Dorsey vacationed with Jay-Z in the Hamptons.
VILLAGE PEOPLE v. TRUMP – Disco legends Village People sent a cease-and-desist letter to Donald Trump, threatening legal action over a costume-clad tribute band at his Mar-a-Lago resort that’s allegedly been performing “Macho Man” and other hit songs without permission.
MOFI SETTLEMENT APPROVED – A federal judge greenlit a $25 million settlement struck by vinyl producer Mobile Fidelity to resolve accusations that the company’s pricey “all analog” records were secretly created using digital methods, overruling objections from some customers that the settlement was “tainted by the stink of collusion.”
LETS TRY THIS AGAIN – T.I. headed back to court for a second trial in his lawsuit claiming that toymaker MGA stole the design of its “OMG” dolls from the OMG Girlz — a defunct teen pop trio created by his wife, Tameka “Tiny” Harris. The new proceedings kicked off months after the first trial ended in an abrupt mistrial.