A court had found similarities in Katy Perry’s song and she had been accused of copying a few musical elements in that song. However, Katy Perry and her collaborators are no longer in the place of being accused of a $2.8 million copyright infringement suit over the “Dark Horse” song back in 2013 hit. Marcus Gray sued Katy Perry saying that she had plagiarised an eight-note riff from his album “Joyful Noise”. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found the accusation over Katy Perry and her collaborators are unsupported with proper evidence. Katy Perry and her collaborators were accused of copying her song “Dark Hors” with the song “Joyful Noise”.
The suit was filed by the Christian hip-hop article Flame, and his suit against the Dark Horse was unsupported with proper evidence, thus Katy Perry was allowed to win the appeal, Thursday ruling. Upholding such a decision, the trial court concluded that such appeal could have suffocated the musical creativity and passed the original verdict. Marcus Gray, known as “Flame” first sued Perry back in 2014, claiming that “Dark Horse” was substantially similar to his song “Joyful Noise.”
Flame, whose real name is Marcus Gray along with others, filed a copyright infringement suit against Katy Perry back in 2016. And a trial took place in this matter in 2019. The council for the Dark Horse claimed that allowing such copyright over this material would affect monopoly over two-note pitch sequences or even the minor scale itself.
As a result, the panel affirmed the trial jury’s decision that the matter is filed with unsupported pieces of evidence, as the verdict of the jury, on Thursday. When Katy Perry released “Dark Horse” featured by a rapper, Juicy J on her album “Prism”, the song topped the Billboard Hot 100. However, the music album “Joyful Noise” did not achieve as much success as the “Dark Horse” achieved, still it has crossed millions of views on YouTube and MySpace.
In the conclusion, Katy Perry and her collaborators will no longer need to pay $2.8 to a rapper who accused her of stealing his hit song to hit her album “Dark Horse”. Marcus Gray was agreed and awarded with a $2.8M payout but later the judge overturned the verdict saying that the melody was not particularly that rare and unique. Lastly, the jury allowed Katy Perry to reverse the plagiarism verdict of the “Dark Horse”.
