Dua Lipa Triumphs in US Court

Dua Lipa recently won a long-running US Court battle against songwriters L Russell Brown and Sandy Linzer who accused her of copying her 2020 global hit single Levitating from 1979 disco track Wiggle and Giggle All Night and 1980 track Don Diablo.

Although a US judge agreed that there were generic similarities between Dua Lipa’s hit and the 45 year old disco beats, she said that those similarities included non-copyrightable musical elements also used by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Gilbert and Sullivan and in the Bee Gees’ Stayin' Alive.

She stated that “pop with a disco feel” created to generate “entertainment and dancing” could not possibly be protectable. If it were, then it would have the absurd effect of stopping all further development of upbeat disco music which entertains and might lead people to dance.

So common sense reigns, for now, even though the losers are heading for an appeal.

However, this is not the first time Lipa has won a copyright infringement case over Levitating.

Florida reggae band Artikal Sound System claimed she ripped off her 2020 chorus from their 2015 track Live Your Life, but there was no evidence that Lipa or her co-writers had access to the 2015 song, a key requirement in any copyright lawsuit. In other words, if you’ve never heard it, how can you possibly copy it?

As all good things come in threes, there is a third legal challenge yet to be heard from Bosko Kante, a featured artist on Levitating who produced vocals through a voicebox. His case is that his vocals were used on remixes without his permission and he’s after two million dollars plus interest, plus profits from the remixes, which he estimates at twenty million dollars.

As with previous Ed Sheeran and Led Zeppelin copyright actions, the bigger the hit song, the greater the number of people who want to claim it as their own. A far cry from George Harrison giving up royalties for 1970’s My Sweet Lord to Ronnie Mack, the writer of the Chiffons’ She’s so Fine which had been released seven years’ earlier, in 1963.

If you have any copyright queries, please get in touch with our Associate Director, Head of Media and Entertainment and Legal 500 expert, Brian Levine, on 01935 846 258 or brian.levine@battens.co.uk.