In October, Katy Perry, Lukasz “Dr. Luke” Gottwald, Capitol Records, and others filed an appeal seeking to overturn or retry a ruling which claimed that Perry’s “Dark Horse” plagiarized Flame’s 2009 Christian rap single “Joyful Noise.” Today (March 17), a judge has wiped out the earlier $2.8 million jury judgement against Perry and her associates. Read the full verdict below.
During the trial, Perry and Dr. Luke claimed they hadn’t heard “Joyful Noise.” The appeal from Perry and the rest called the jury verdict “legally unsupportable” and “a grave miscarriage of justice.” In the Tuesday decision about the appeal, U.S. District Court Judge Christina Snyder cited analysis from musicologist Todd Decker. She ultimately ruled that the eight-note element at the root of the plagiarism charge was “not a particularly unique or rare combination,” and therefore not a “protectable expression.”
Read “What Led Zeppelin’s ‘Stairway’ Trial Says About Copyright’s Increasingly Blurred Lines” on the Pitch.