Will.i.am and Justin Timberlake are working to dismiss a copyright lawsuit for “Damn Girl,” which used a sample of “A New Day is Here At Last” and did it legally. A court filing issued on July 19 stated that Timberlake and Will Adams (Will.i.am) are not culpable for copyright infringement.
Their troubles first started when PK Music Publishing filed a lawsuit this past February accusing “Damn Girl” of imitating the hook, rhythm, harmony and melody from the song “A New Day Is Here At Last.” The song was written by the disco artist Perry Kibble, and her sister Janis McQuinton insists that she had inherited the copyright to the song the year that it was recorded by J.C. Davis. The song “Damn Girl” had been released in 2006 and so McQuinton had initially been seeking damages from then until the present day, all while insisting that she wasn’t aware of the infringement until 2015.
“Plaintiff’s lawsuit seeks to turn Supreme Court precedent and four decades of unbroken Second Circuit law on their head,” Adam’s attorney Robert Jacobs wrote in a statement reported by The Hollywood Reporter. “Just 21 months before Plaintiff commenced this action, the Supreme Court unequivocally stated that copyright plaintiffs are limited to ‘retrospective relief only three years back from the time of suit.’”
The statement further said, “Plaintiff ignores the fact that… before Damn Girl’s release, defendants sought and obtained mechanical and sample use licenses for Day’s use from J.C. Davis, who admittedly had originally recorded and released Day in 1969… and from Josh Davis who released a remix of the 1969 recording with J.C. Davis’s permission in 2005 on an album identifying J.C. Davis as the composition’s sole copyright owner.”
© 2024 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
