10 Songs That Led To Massive Lawsuits

One of the biggest names in pop music, Katy Perry has consistently brought out hits for more than a decade. One of those hits was 2013 single Dark Horse on which she collaborated with Juicy J. The pair wrote the song with a bunch of producers and it became one of the best-selling songs in digital history. The song shows the perspective of a witch who warns a man not to fall in love with her or that will be his romantic life settled. The magical vibe that the song goes combines elements of pop, trap, hip hop and electropop. However, not everyone was under its spell.

Flame, a Christian rapper, claimed that Perry's Dark Horse copied his 2008 song Joyful Noise and filed a lawsuit against her in 2014. Eventually, five years later in 2019, the jury ruled in favour of Flame and his associates, awarding them compensation of $2.78 million in damages. Perry herself would have to pay $550,000. However, it was a short-lived success for Flame as the story did not end there.

Perry appealed the verdict and had it overturned in March 2020. California District Judge Christina A. Snyder decided that Flame and his legal team 'failed to satisfy the extrinsic test'. The extrinsic test is the test that definitively proves copyright infringement, which can be complex to pass.

The extrinsic test must prove that the accused had access to the defendant's copyrighted material and propose a chain of events that would have led to the accused coming across the work before plagiarising it.