A federal appeals court sided with singer Katy Perry on Thursday, ruling that the $2.8 million lawsuit by Christian rapper Flame was “unsupported.”
The ruling, from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, found that Flame, whose legal name is Marcus Gray, was attempting to claim an “improper monopoly” over conventional “musical building blocks” when he first sued Perry over her 2013 hit, “Dark Horse.”
In a 3-0 verdict, the court said Gray had been attempting to claim an “improper monopoly” over conventional “musical building blocks” when he sued Perry.
“The trial record compels us to conclude that the ostinatos (In music, an ostinato [ostiˈnaːto] is a motif or phrase that persistently repeats in the same musical voice, frequently in the same pitch) at issue here consist entirely of commonplace musical elements, and that the similarities between them do not arise out of an original combination of these elements,” the new ruling reads.
“Allowing a copyright over this material would essentially amount to allowing an improper monopoly over two-note pitch sequences or even the minor scale itself, especially in light of the limited number of expressive choices available when it comes to an eight-note repeated musical figure.”
The ruling brings the eight-year trial to an end, barring an unlikely trip to the US Supreme Court.
Currently, Dua Lipa faces two lawsuits surrounding her global hit “Levitating,” which has spent over a year on the Billboard Hot 100. The plaintiffs are Florida reggae band Artikal Sound System and songwriters L. Russell Brown and Sandy Linzer.
Ed Sheeran copyright case: Musician denies plagiarizing hook of ‘Shape of You’
The British pop star sang in court in a bid to demonstrate how different songs can have similar melodies if they have the same scale and rhythm
