Justin Bieber Hit with Copyright Lawsuit

Justin Bieber Hit with Copyright Lawsuit

Justin Bieber and county music duo Dan + Shay have been sued for copyright infringement in federal court over their Grammy winning hit song “10,000 Hours.”^[1] The complaint, brought by the Lovell Firm on behalf of Melomega Music, alleges that “10,000 Hours” bears the “exact same lyrics, pitch, rhythm, contours, and metric placement at exactly the same moment” with their 40-year-old track, “The First Time Baby is a Holiday.”^[2] Further, the complaint alleges that core portions of the song such as the chorus, verse, and hook are “so striking that ‘10,000 Hours’ simply cannot have been independently created.”^[3] To corroborate these claims, Lovell Firm retained an expert musicologist, Dr. Alexander Stewart, to objectively compare the songs utilizing the “empirical lens of musical science” which resulted in the “ineluctable conclusion that defendants stole plaintiff’s song.”^[4]

Interestingly, this is not Bieber’s first allegation of copyright infringement.^[5] In 2016, indie artist, White Hinterland, sued Justin Bieber and Skrillex over their hit single “Sorry.”^[6] Hinterland alleged that Bieber stole a prominent vocal riff in her song without license or permission from her to do so.^[7] Prior to this, Bieber and Usher faced a $10 million dollar suit for their song “Somebody to Love” for lifting portions of music without their permission.^[8]

Although copyright infringement lawsuits by relatively obscure artists against popular hit makers are not uncommon, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has recently started to side with established artists when deciding these cases.^[9] Recently, the Ninth Circuit held that copyright infringement complaints alleging the similarity of specific musical elements like a few notes were not original or creative enough to merit copyright protection.^[10] In particular, the court found that a suit against Katy Perry which centered on a mere 8 note-sequence was insufficient grounds to merit copyright protection.^[11] Recognizing the appellate court’s movement against spurious cases, the Lovell Group seemingly referred to this move by claiming that their complaint does not revolve around a mere “6 to 7 consecutive notes.”^[12] Instead, Lovell claims that Bieber and Dan + Shay copied “several 47-note sections” from “First Time.”^[13]

Although Lovel offered a highly detailed comparison of the two songs, the lawsuit spent significantly less time on the key element of access. In copyright infringement cases, access means that the creator of the allegedly infringing work had a reasonable opportunity to hear the allegedly infringed work.^[14] In this case, the complaint did not provide direct evidence of the fact that Bieber or Dan + Shay listened to the song, but rather conveyed that “First Time” had been re-released in 2014 and has been played on Spotify 8,000 times creating the inference that Bieber or Dan + Shay had “accessed” the song.^[15] Time will tell whether copyright infringement did occur, hopefully a resolution will be reached within 10,000 hours.