Katy Perry wins the stupid “Dark Horse” plagiarism case. Good.

One of the most insane accusations of plagiarism we’ve seen is the accusation that Katy Perry ripped off a rapper known as Flame for her hit, “Dark Horse.” Let’s revisit the claim.

The rapper, Flame (real name: Marcus Gray), contends that there’s an eight-note keyboard figure in “Dark Horse” that was lifted directly from his 2008 track. Never mind that they’re not the same notes. It’s another note played in a similar way. You can hear the disparity in this mashup.

And let’s not forget this from 1985 from The Art of Noise.

Back to the lawsuit. Gray convinced a California jury that plagiarism did occur and won a judgment of US$2.8 million. But then the judge overturned the decision, saying that Gray’s team failed on matters of law. Those eight notes just aren’t enough to enjoy copyright protection.

Then Gray has filed an appeal saying “The district court erroneously asserted that ‘a pitch sequence … is not entitled to copyright protection’. Perhaps the district court didn’t understand that a pitch sequence is a technical term for a sequence of musical notes, ie a melody. Copyright most definitely protects original melodies and especially distinctive eight-note melodies that repeat throughout a song.”

This came despite musicologists having come to Katy’s defence.

The whole ordeal is finally over with the correct verdict being delivered by the Ninth Circuit Court. I quote from CMU:

“The Ninth Circuit appeals court in the US yesterday sided with Katy Perry in the big old ‘Dark Horse’ song theft case. The musical elements Perry’s hit has in common with earlier track ‘Joyful Noise’ were “commonplace” and therefore not protected by copyright in isolation, judges concluded. The ruling confirms that the US appeals court where many song-theft disputes end up remains cautious about over-extending copyright protection in a way that could hinder the songwriting process.”

If Gray wants to challenge this, the next stop is the Supreme Court. We’ll see.