Katy Perry loses copyright infringement lawsuit for ‘Dark Horse’

A Los Angeles jury determined yesterday that Katy Perry’s 2013 song, ‘Dark Horse’, indeed copied a Christian rap song and infringed on its copyright.

The verdict landed in favour of plaintiffs Marcus Gray, Emanuel Lambert, and Chike Ojukwu, who cowrote the song ‘Joyful Noise’. The song, performed by Gray under the stage name Flame, was released in 2009.

Gray and his co-plaintiffs filed the case in 2014 alleging that the notes and beats of 'Dark Horse' had been swiped from ‘Joyful Noise’, a Christian rap song.

Jurors deemed that all songwriters and corporations that released and distributed the songs were liable, including Katy Perry who is only credited with writing the song lyrics. Juicy J, who featured on the song and was only involved with writing his rap, was also found liable.

Dr. Luke, Max Martin, and Cirkut, who produced the song for Perry and came up with the song’s beat were also held liable.

While Gray’s legal team argued that the beat in his song is substantially similar to that sampled in ‘Dark Horse’, Perry’s lawyers argued that the beat was so simple that it couldn’t have been lifted.

“They’re trying to own basic building blocks of music, the alphabet of music that should be available to everyone,” Perry’s lawyer Christine Lepera said during closing arguments Thursday, according to the AP.

In the end, the jury declared that the ‘Joyful Noise’ beat was original enough to constitute copyrighting and that the song was widely enough distributed that someone on Perry’s team could have heard it.

The case will now continue into the penalty phase where the amount of compensation for the infringement will be decided.

Listen to 'Dark Horse' and 'Joyful Noise' below: