Post Malone’s Circles authorship legal battle to go to trial

completemusicupdate.com:

The legal battle over the authorship and ownership of Post Malone’s ‘Circles’ is heading to trial after the rapper failed to get a lawsuit filed by a former collaborator completely dismissed.

Although the dispute that will be heard in court will actually consider the authorship and ownership of an earlier composition which subsequently morphed into ‘Circles’.Malone is being sued by Tyler Armes – a songwriter, producer, multi-instrumentalist and member of Canadian rap-rock outfit Down With Webster – who joined the rapper and producer Frank Dukes for an all-night jamming session in August 2018.

He claims that during that session he contributed to the song that become ‘Circles’.Although – according to Armes – Malone’s manager initially offered him a 5% split of the copyright in the song after conceding that the musician had indeed co-written the hit, when Armes pushed for a better deal Malone’s team backtracked.

With no credit on or share in the song, Armes then went legal through the US courts.As the litigation has gone through the motions, Malone hasn’t denied that the 2018 jamming session happened, but has sought to play down the role Armes played at that session and subsequently in the creation of ‘Circles’.Seeking to get the case dismissed entirely, his legal team argued that Armes mainly contributed a generic chord pattern which is not protected by copyright in isolation, and that he didn’t have any ‘superintendence’ or ‘control’ over the creation of ‘Circle’, so couldn’t be considered a co-author of the song.The judge overseeing the case has declined to dismiss Armes’ lawsuit outright, but did conclude on summary judgement that Armes was not a co-author of the final work that is ‘Circles’.