The band Artikal Sound System filed a lawsuit against the celebrity last year, alleging that her 2020 single copied the main chorus from their 2017 song 'Live Your Life.'
However, U.S. District Judge Sunshine S. Sykes stated on Monday that there was no indication that anyone involved in the creation of 'Levitating' had "access" to the earlier music, which is a crucial element in any copyright lawsuit.
The federal judge added that those arguments were “too generic or too insubstantial” to sustain a lawsuit.
“Plaintiffs’ failure to specify how frequently they performed “Live Your Life” publicly during the specified period, where these performances took place, and the size of the venues and/or audiences precludes the Court from finding that Plaintiffs’ live performances of the song plausibly contributed to its saturation of markets in which Defendants would have encountered it,” the judge wrote.
The song spent 77 weeks on Billboard’s Hot 100 U.S. singles chart, peaking at No. 2 in 2021.
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