Dua Lipa is celebrating victory in her Levitating copyright case, with a New York judge ruling that the song does not plagiarise two other songs.
The case was brought by in 2022 by songwriters L Russell Brown and Sandy Linzer, who argued that Levitating infringed the copyright of two songs that they own the rights to: Cory Daye’s Wiggle and Giggle All Night, from 1979, and Miguel Bosé’s Don Diablo, which was released in 1980. They were the writers of the former, and won the rights to the latter in a previous copyright case.
Considering the melodic similarities, Judge Katherine Polk Failla ruled that they amounted to nothing more than “five groupings of repeated 16th notes descending on a B minor scale in Levitating but on a D major scale in Don Diablo”.
This along with one additional note, said the court, didn’t amount to the copyrightable “signature melody” that they claimed was theirs. The judge also pointed out that similar melodic figures have been in use for centuries by artists ranging from Mozart to the Bee Gees.
In this respect, Lipa and her team can be thankful to Ed Sheeran, who in 2024 won his case against the heirs of Ed Townshend, co-writer of Marvin Gaye’s Let Get It On. They unsuccessfully argued that Sheeran’s song Thinking Out Loud breached their copyright.
This ruling set a precedent that the “basic musical building blocks like notes, rhythms, and chords are generally not copyrightable,” and Lipa - along with her co-writers and record company - have benefited from that.
The judge also rejected the idea that Levitating takes its overall musical style and ‘function’ from the claimants’ songs.
“A musical style, defined by plaintiffs as ‘pop with a disco feel’, and a musical function, defined by plaintiffs to include ‘entertainment and dancing’, cannot possibly be protectable,” the judge said. “To hold otherwise would be to completely foreclose the further development of music in that genre or for that purpose.”
This is the second time that Levitating has been the subject of a copyright infringement claim. Reggae group Artikal Sound System previously argued that it borrowed too heavily from the chorus of their 2015 song Live Your Life, but this claim was also dismissed.
Lawyers for Brown and Linzer say that they “respectfully disagree” with the decision in the current case and will appeal against it. Dua Lipa and her representatives have yet to comment.
Lipa is currently on tour and also celebrating the fifth anniversary of Future Nostalgia, the smash hit album from which Levitating is taken. A new version of Physical - another single from the album - has just been released with additional vocals from Troye Sivan.
