Music artist Katy Perry was under public scrutiny during 2014 when the Christian rapper Marcus Gray filed and won a lawsuit against the artist. The lawsuit was filed against one of Katy Perry's most successful songs to date, ‘Dark Horse.’ Marcus Gray filed the lawsuit under the claim that she used the main riff of his song ‘Joyful Noise’ in her own song.
Gray's legal team won the initial lawsuit by arguing that it was very likely that Perry and her song writers heard Gray's song previously. Gray has millions of views on the Youtube platform for ‘Joyful Noise’ and his album had been nominated for a Grammy award in the past. He also argued that Perry’s previous Christian roots make it even more likely that she and her team had come across the song at some point and copied it.
The court case had initially gone well for Gray, he was to be awarded $2.8 million but Perry’s legal team appealed the decision. Perry would go on to win the appeal with a unanimous vote of 3-0. Perry’s legal team's defense was that the very minor similarities between both songs were due to the fact that they both used the same essential building blocks of music. The outcome of this court case was heavily publicized by the media and will most likely go on to be used as an example for similar future lawsuits.
This is not the first time that a song has been accused of being stolen. Similarly, other artists like Ed Sheeran, Dua Lipa, and Lizzo (to name a few) have also been accused of stealing or copying songs. There is a legal way to take inspiration from another song and avoid a lawsuit. It is called sampling; the use of a sample of a beat, rhythm, melody, etc. in another piece of music with legal permission given by the owner of the intellectual property being sampled. A recent example is the artist Olivia Rodrigo who sampled many songs for her debut album ‘Sour.’ The most notable sample being from Paramore's 2007 hit ‘Misery Business’ heard in Olivia's ‘Good 4 U.’ Rodrigo granted song writing credits to the band because the songs sounded very similar to each other.
This legal battle brought to light the importance of protecting and defending intellectual property in the court of law. Intellectual property can be defined as any creative invention or product that is protected by a patent, copyright, etc. It has to be protected by a patent, copyrighted, or something along the same lines for a person to be able to file for lawsuits if they deem that their intellectual property was used without permission. The clientele and need for these lawsuits will persist and the outcome of Perry's case will help shape the decisions for future cases.
By Elidia Magaña
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