Dua Lipa wins ‘Levitating’ copyright case with a little help from Ed Sheeran

[Teletubby 142,274]

Dua Lipa has won a lawsuit that claimed her song “Levitating” copied the melody of a 1970s disco track.

Songwriters L Russell Brown and Sandy Linzer sued Lipa in 2022, alleging “Levitating” infringed on the copyright of their songs “Wiggle and Giggle All Night” (1979) and “Don Diablo” (1980).

Judge Katherine Polk Failla ruled that Dua Lipa's song shared only generic elements with Brown and Linzer's songs — the kind of basic musical building blocks that are not covered by federal copyright law and cannot be owned by any one songwriter.

The ruling heavily relied on the Second Circuit’s recent decision in Structured Asset Sales, LLC v. Sheeran, which appears to have been pivotal for Lipa’s defense.

That precedent-setting case, which Ed Sheeran won in November 2024, established that “basic musical building blocks like notes, rhythms, and chords are generally not copyrightable,” though a “work consisting of unprotectable elements may still be protectable as an original ‘selection and arrangement’ of those elements.”

The Sheeran decision provided a powerful legal framework that directly benefited Lipa’s defense, as Judge Failla explicitly cited it when rejecting the plaintiff’s claims that a descending scale plus one additional note could constitute protectable expression.
source

Edited Friday at 12:32 PM by Teletubby

[River 110,702]

Gaga gave Siouxsie and the Banshees writing credits for a very mild interpolation that honestly, sits on the same rule as the lawsuit, but she still gave them writing credits.. even Rina did that with This Hell and ABBA and she didn't even intend to sample them, but she noticed the similarity to their song, so she gave them the writing credit. , so Dua and Ed maybe won but they lost respect, when there is a similarity, and there is let's not be delusional, just give the writing credits.

[Luke78619 23,227]

36 minutes ago, River said:

Gaga gave Siouxsie and the Banshees writing credits for a very mild interpolation that honestly, sits on the same rule as the lawsuit, but she still gave them writing credits.. even Rina did that with This Hell and ABBA and she didn't even intend to sample them, but she noticed the similarity to their song, so she gave them the writing credit. , so Dua and Ed maybe won but they lost respect, when there is a similarity, and there is let's not be delusional, just give the writing credits.

But should they give writing credits if they’ve never even heard the song? 

i obviously can’t speak on her behalf, but if Dua has never heard the song, then why is she expected to give writing credits when their track didn’t help with the process of making the song? 

[River 110,702]

14 minutes ago, Luke78619 said:

But should they give writing credits if they’ve never even heard the song? 

i obviously can’t speak on her behalf, but if Dua has never heard the song, then why is she expected to give writing credits when their track didn’t help with the process of making the song? 

the chance that not even one person who worked on the song, didn't know 2 songs from the same band that shares an identical similarity to Levitation, is very unlikely..

Especially when she bragged about listening to a lot of disco songs from the 70s.

And even if they are telling the truth and they didn't hear the song, somehow the songs sounds identical, and it can happen, they could have settle for this 3% of interpolation, the writers wouldn't earn much anyway.

 

[AVeryGagaHolyDick 23,036]

I mean you could say Disease sounds like that too with “poison on the inside, I could be your antidote tonight”