Judge Rules in Favor of Defendants in Reggaeton Copyright Case
MUSIC
A federal judge has dealt a major blow to a sprawling copyright lawsuit that targeted nearly 2,000 reggaeton songs, ruling that Jamaican production duo Steely & Clevie cannot claim ownership over the dembow rhythm that underpins the genre. U.S. District Judge André Birotte Jr. reversed course just two months after suggesting the case should go to a jury, siding instead with attorneys for Bad Bunny, who argued the plaintiffs had failed to identify a single copyrighted work containing the musical arrangement they sought to protect.
The reversal came after Bad Bunny's legal team pressed the court to take a second look at the underlying claim. Attorneys contended that Steely & Clevie had cobbled together elements from three separate recordings to manufacture what lawyer Kenneth D. Freundlich called a "Frankenstein" copyright, rather than pointing to one original work that contained the full arrangement. Birotte agreed, writing that the plaintiffs had not clearly shown which copyrighted work actually held the protectable elements they were trying to enforce, undercutting the foundation of the case.
The ruling is a significant win for more than 150 artists named as defendants, including Karol G, Daddy Yankee, J Balvin, Drake, Pitbull, Luis Fonsi and Justin Bieber. The lawsuit, brought by Cleveland "Clevie" Browne and the heirs of Wycliffe "Steely" Johnson, had traced its origins to their 1989 track "Fish Market" as the basis for their claims against nearly 2,000 songs across the reggaeton genre.