A federal appeals court on Thursday refused to reinstate a $2.8 million copyright verdict against Katy Perry over her 2013 chart-topper “Dark Horse,” ruling that two songs share only basic musical “building blocks.”
A rapper named Marcus Gray sued Perry in 2014 over accusations that she ripped off his “Joyful Noise” and jurors later awarded him the big verdict, but a judge overturned that ruling in 2020 on the grounds that the “ostinato” Perry allegedly copied was too simple for copyright protection.
By a 3-to-0 vote, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld that decision on Thursday, saying a decision against Perry would have dangerous consequences for future creativity.
“The portion of the Joyful Noise ostinato that overlaps with the Dark Horse ostinato consists of a manifestly conventional arrangement of musical building blocks,” the appeals court wrote. “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.”
Barring an unlikely trip to the U.S. Supreme Court, the ruling is the end of the road for Gray’s claims against Perry, ending years of litigation over “Dark Horse.”
This story is developing.
