In 2013, Katy Perry released a song Dark Horse that made it to the chartbusters instantly. However, she soon got into trouble as she was accused of plagiarism. Rapper Marcus Gray who performs as Flames accused Katy and her collaborators of copying his music. In July this year, the court passed an order holding Katy and collaborates guilty of plagiarism and asked them to pay $2.78 million. Now, Katy had appealed for a re-trial in this case.
On October 9, the defendants filed an appeal asking the court to either overturn the order or at least grant a re-trail for them to prove themselves. An excerpt from the appeal reads, "the legally unsupportable jury verdicts in this music copyright infringement case that are widely recognized within the music industry — and beyond — as a grave miscarriage of justice. …The erroneous verdicts in this case and the precedent established thereby present serious harm to music creators and to the music industry as a whole," as stated by Variety.
Katy's song Dark Horse has been said to be a copy of Gray's song titled Joyful Noise that released in 2008. However, Katy's lawyers have filed a motion the California court stating that the opposite party does not have enough evidence to prove the copyright registration of the similar elements between the two songs or the beat in question.
"Plaintiffs did not present any direct evidence of access or circumstantial evidence of a chain of events linking 'Joyful Noise' to the relevant authors of 'Dark Horse,'" reads an excerpt of the case filed, as stated by Billboard.
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