Dua Lipa won a ruling Thursday (March 27) dismissing a copyright lawsuit claiming she copied her smash hit song “Levitating” from two different decades-old songs.
The case, filed in 2022 by songwriters L. Russell Brown and Sandy Linzer, accused Lipa of ripping off their 1979 song “Wiggle and Giggle All Night” and their 1980 song “Don Diablo.” The lawsuit was one of two high-profile copyright cases filed over “Levitating,” a massive hit that spent 77 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100.
In her decision, Judge Katherine Polk Failla ruled that Lipa’s song shared only generic elements with Brown and Linzer’s songs — the kind of basic musical building blocks that are not covered by federal copyright law and cannot be owned by any one songwriter.
“The court finds that a musical style, defined by plaintiffs as ‘pop with a disco feel,’ and a musical function, defined by plaintiffs to include ‘entertainment and dancing,’ cannot possibly be protectable,” the judge wrote. “To hold otherwise would be to completely foreclose the further development of music in that genre or for that purpose.”
The judge said that some of the material Brown and Linzer claimed Lipa stole — like a “patter style” featuring rapid singing of one syllable per note — had been “used for centuries” and existed in operas by Mozart and operettas by Gilbert and Sullivan. The judge said another allegedly infringing element, a rapid tempo, was also “common” and had appeared identically in “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees.
“It is possible that a ‘layperson’ could listen to portions of plaintiffs’ and defendants’ songs and hear similarities,” the judge said. “But … the similarity between the works concerns only non-copyrightable elements of the plaintiffs’ work.”
In a statement to Billboard, an attorney for Brown and Linzer said they “respectfully disagree” with the decision and would file an appeal.
“This case has always been about standing up for the enduring value of original songwriting, and we continue to believe in the strength of Mr. Brown and Mr. Linzer’s creative legacy,” attorney Jason T. Brown said. “There’s a growing disconnect between how these cases are decided — by academically analyzing briefs, bar lines, and musical notation — versus how audiences actually experience music.”
An attorney for Lipa did not immediately return a request for comment.
Released on Dua Lipa’s 2020 album Future Nostalgia, “Levitating” spent a whopping 41 weeks in the top ten of the Hot 100 — the longest ever such run for a female artist — and was later named the No. 1 Hot 100 song of 2021.
In early 2022, the star was sued over the track twice, both over accusations that she had lifted key elements from earlier songs. The first lawsuit came from a Florida reggae band named Artikal Sound System, which claimed Lipa lifted the core hook for her song from their 2015 “Live Your Life.” That case was dropped in 2023 after Lipa’s attorneys won a key early-stage ruling.
The second case came from Brown and Linzer, who alleged that Lipa had stolen the melody that starts just a few seconds into her song, when Lipa begins singing, “If you wanna run away with me…” They called it a “duplicate” of their own songs.
But in Thursday’s ruling, Judge Failla said that claim was merely over “a descending chord and the one additional note” — a “combination of two unprotectable elements” that she said are “not sufficiently numerous or original to constitute an original work entitled to copyright protection.”
In reaching that conclusion, the judge heavily cited from recent litigation against Ed Sheeran over accusations that his “Thinking Out Loud” infringed Marvin Gaye‘s “Let’s Get It On.” That case also ended with a ruling that Sheeran had used only common, unprotectible elements.
