Katy Perry’s ‘Dark Horse’ Prevails Over Christian Rapper’s Lawsuit

UPDATE: The pop star and her team no longer have to pay $2.8 million in damages in the copyright case.

Update (March 21, 2022): After a years-long legal battle between Christian rapper Flame and Katy Perry, “Joyful Noise” did not overtake “Dark Horse.”

A ruling this month in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that the pop star didn’t have to pay damages for copyright infringement for similar synthesized segment that appears in both songs.

Perry and her team had been ordered to pay $2.8 million by a federal jury in 2019, but the district court voided the decision the following year.

Flame (Marcus Gray)’s attorney issued a statement last week saying they were “disappointed by the court’s rejection of the unanimous verdict” from the initial trial.

The case was significant for the music world because of its potential to set a precedent for how the courts will consider future cases alleging copyright infringement.

The appeals decision analyzes Gray and Perry’s songs, focusing on a repeated pattern of notes, called an ostinato. The patterns sound familiar in both songs but are slightly different.

“The Ninth Circuit concluded that the two songs’ similar ostinatos result only from the use of commonplace, unoriginal musical principles, and thus could not be the basis for a copyright infringement claim,” wrote Eric Ball and Ryan Kwock, attorneys at Fenwick, a firm specializing in technology and intellectual property.

“While Katy Perry comes out victorious as non-infringing in this case, the opinion simultaneously signals the weaknesses in the ‘Dark Horse’ song’s copyright itself,” they said. “If the ostinato in ‘Joyful Noise’ is unprotectable, ...