Dua Lipa was facing a lawsuit that claimed she copied her hit song “Levitating” from Artikal Sound System’s 2017 song, “Live Your Life.” In the first (and likely, final) ruling on the case, US District Judge Sunshine S. Sykes ruled that nobody who worked on Lipa’s song had access to the one from Artikal and dismissed the case.
The band had previously claimed the brother-in-law of one of their members taught guitar to a woman who worked with Lipa’s co-writer, according to Billboard.
“These attenuated links, which bear little connection to either of the two musical compositions at issue here, also do not suggest a reasonable likelihood that defendants actually encountered plaintiffs’ song,” Sykes wrote.
Artikal Sound System also pointed out that they had sold “several hundred” CDs and the song was popular enough to have been heard by the “Levitating” writers.
“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,” Sykes added.
Currently, the lawsuit is over, unless Artikal Sound System decide to return to Sykes with changes for an “amended complaint.”
Dua Lipa is a Warner Music artist. .
