It’s been an excellent couple of weeks for well-known songwriters preventing off lawsuits accusing them of copyright infringement. First Mariah Carey beat a long-running swimsuit accusing her of ripping off parts of her enduring smash All I Need For Christmas Is You.
Now, information breaks that Dua Lipa has been victorious in one other landmark case, this time pertaining to her megahit, Levitating.
A federal decide in New York has dismissed a copyright infringement lawsuit in opposition to the Warner Data-signed act, ruling that Levitating, launched in 2020, didn’t illegally copy a 1979 disco track.
In an opinion and order issued Thursday (March 27), U.S. District Decide Katherine Polk Failla granted abstract judgment in favor of Lipa and her co-defendants, discovering that the plaintiffs did not show substantial similarity between protectable parts of the works.
These co-defendants included all three main music corporations – as Sony Music Publishing (US) LLC; Common Music Company; and Warner Data Inc – plus Lipa’s Levitating co-writers, Clarence Espresso, Jr., Sarah Hudson, and Stephen Kozmeniuk.
The lawsuit, filed by Larball Publishing Firm and Sandy Linzer Productions, alleged that Levitating infringed on their copyrights for 2 songs: Wiggle and Giggle All Night time, a 1979 disco track recorded by Cory Daye, and Don Diablo, a 1980 track by Miguel Bosé that the plaintiffs had acquired rights to via a earlier infringement settlement.
(MBW has obtained Decide Failla’s order and you’ll learn it in full right here.)
Decide Finds No Protectable Similarity
Decide Failla decided that the musical phrase shared by Levitating and the plaintiffs’ works amounted to “5 groupings of repeated sixteenth notes descending on a B minor scale in Levitating however on a D main scale in Don Diablo“.
The court docket concluded that this descending scale, together with one extra notice that plaintiffs argued created a “signature melody”, weren’t protectable below copyright regulation.
“The Court docket in the end concludes that there could be no substantial similarity (and thus no copyright violation) as a matter of regulation, as a result of ‘the similarity between [the] works considerations solely non-copyrightable parts of the [P]laintiff[s’] work,’” Decide Failla wrote.
Ed Sheeran Precedent Strengthened Lipa’s Case
The ruling closely relied on the Second Circuit’s latest resolution in Structured Asset Gross sales, LLC v. Sheeran, which seems to have been pivotal for Lipa’s protection.
That precedent-setting case, which Ed Sheeran received in November 2024, established that “fundamental musical constructing blocks like notes, rhythms, and chords are typically not copyrightable,” although a “work consisting of unprotectable parts should be protectable as an unique ‘choice and association’ of these parts.”
The Sheeran resolution offered a robust authorized framework that immediately benefited Lipa’s protection, as Decide Failla explicitly cited it when rejecting the plaintiff’s claims {that a} descending scale plus one extra notice might represent protectable expression.
Plaintiffs’ Arguments Rejected
The plaintiffs had tried to argue that extra parts, together with the “patter model” of singing, the “pop with a disco really feel” musical model, tempo, and different traits made the mixture protectable.
Nevertheless, the court docket rejected this idea, noting it had been launched too late within the proceedings and, extra importantly, that these extra parts “lack enough originality alone, or as mixed” to be protectable below copyright regulation.
Decide Failla identified that a number of of the claimed parts have been commonplace compositional parts, with proof displaying the “patter model” has been used “for hundreds of years” in operas by Mozart and Rossini and operettas by Gilbert and Sullivan.
“Extra essentially, the Court docket finds {that a} musical model, outlined by Plaintiffs as ‘pop with a disco really feel,’ and a musical perform, outlined by Plaintiffs to incorporate ‘leisure and dancing,’ can’t presumably be protectable — alone or in tandem — as a result of to carry in any other case can be to utterly foreclose the additional improvement of music in that style or for that objective,” the ruling said.
The court docket additionally dismissed the plaintiffs’ by-product claims for declaratory aid and accounting, which that they had acknowledged can be rendered moot if the copyright infringement declare failed.
This lawsuit dismissal marks the conclusion of one in every of a number of authorized challenges Dua Lipa has confronted over Levitating.
In 2022, a band known as Artikal Sound System alleged that Levitating was “considerably related” to their observe Reside Your Life.
That case was dismissed by a federal court docket decide who dominated that Artikal Sound System failed to supply proof that Levitating‘s creators had entry to their track.
In a separate ongoing case, producer Bosko Kante sued Lipa, WMG and producer Stephen Kozmeniuk in 2023, alleging {that a} talkbox recording he made was used with out permission on three remixes of Levitating.
In September 2024, Decide Hernan D. Vera of the U.S. District Court docket for the Central District of California denied a movement to dismiss that case, permitting it to proceed.
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