The damages phase has begun one day after a Los Angeles jury found pop singer Katy Perry and her collaborators guilty of lifting a musical passage from Christian rap song “Joyful Noise.”
The jury found Perry’s 2013 hit “Dark Horse” sounded very similar to “Joyful Noise,” by rapper Marcus Gray, who is known by his stage name Flame.
The jury is now deciding the damages Perry, 34, and her collaborators should pay Gray, 37.
The jury also found Perry’s collaborators – including singer/songwriter Sarah Hudson and music producers Lukasz “Dr. Luke” Gottwald, Max Martin and Cirkut – had the opportunity to listen to “Joyful Noise” after Gray submitted a demo of his song to them.
“This was a case about taking,” Gray’s attorney, Michael Kahn, said in his closing argument Thursday. “The defendants copied an important part of (Gray’s) song.”
But Perry’s lawyer, Christine Lepera, said the electronic beat is so “commonplace” that it cannot be copyrighted.
“It is commonplace expression,” she said, adding that the “unremarkable” beat in Gray’s song is the only element the two tracks have in common.
“There is no reasonable basis to assume” Perry and her collaborators ever heard “Joyful Noise,” Lepera said. But the judge disagreed.
U.S. District Judge Christina Snyder wrote that the plaintiff proved his case and he was entitled to a trial because the Grammy-Nominated “Joyful Noise” achieved critical success and was readily available and viewed millions of times on YouTube and MySpace.”
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