Dua Lipa lawyer sets out arguments for dismissing Levitating song theft lawsuit
completemusicupdate.comLawyers for Dua Lipa have set out some key arguments for why one of the song theft lawsuits filed in relation to her 2020 hit ‘Levitating’ should be dismissed.
Basically there is simply no evidence Dua Lipa and her collaborators had ever heard the two songs they are accused of ripping off.Because, yes, in the second of two copyright lawsuits targeting ‘Levitating’, plaintiffs L Russell Brown and Sandy Linze claimed that Lipa’s track actually lifted elements from two songs they wrote back in the day: 1979’s ‘Wiggle And Giggle All Night’ and 1980’s ‘Don Diablo’.But, Lipa’s lawyer Christine Lepera wrote in a letter to the court earlier this week, “the alleged similarities – a descending scale in which each pitch is repeated on evenly spaced notes, and a common clave rhythm – are unprotectable, and the result of the coincidental use of basic musical building blocks”.
And, perhaps more importantly, “the ‘Levitating’ writers never heard the [earlier] compositions”.Of course, to show that one song infringes the copyright in an earlier song, you need to prove that the creators of the later work had access to the earlier work, as well as demonstrate that any similarities are sufficient enough to constitute copyright infringement.Unless there is solid evidence that the creators of the later song deliberately set out to rip off the earlier song, you need to come up with some kind of hypothesis as to how those creators heard the music they’re accused of nabbing.If the earlier work is super famous – and therefore widely distributed and known – that’s relatively easy to do.
But if it’s not super-famous – and usually in cases like this it isn’t – then claimants need to be more imaginative in their hypothesising.This usually involves.
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