Jessie J has settled the lawsuit against her hit song “Domino” has been settled with an appeal. The original lawsuit accused the British singer and her songwriters of stealing the song's melody from Santa Barbara indie band, Loomis & The Lust. A 9th Circuit ruling published this past Friday dismissed the suit.
The lawsuit was originally began in 2012 when Will Loomis sued Jessie J and Universal Music Group for allegedly stealing his song's melody. Loomis asserted that “Domino” imitated the melody from a song he’d written entitled “Bright Red Chords.”
The Telegraph reported in 2012 that Loomis had been seeking a jury trial and $150,000 in damages. Documents were filed to the United States District Court alleging that Jessie J and her team “willfully infringed” on copyright and sold “millions of copies of their derivative work,” which ended up creating “significant ill-gotten commercial advantage.”
A year later in 2013, a district court found that Loomis hadn’t presented enough evidence to accuse the singer and her songwriters, including Dr. Luke, of stealing the two-measure vocal melody from his song. The 9th Circuit has upheld that decision now stemming from their original ruling.
In opposition to their ruling Loomis claimed that it was multiple intermediaries who delivered the melody to the songwriters behind “Domino.” He asserted that it may have been his former guitarist Casey Hooper who passed it along while working with Katy Perry, who also works with Dr. Luke.
“Nothing in the record shows the requisite nexus between Hooper and the Domino songwriters except for Loomis’s own speculation,” Circuit Judge Richard Clifton wrote according to The Hollywood Reporter.
“The problem is that it was not supported by potentially admissible evidence,” Clifton further wrote. “At bottom, the record consists primarily of Loomis’s speculations of access unsupported by personal knowledge. The other evidence did not fill the breach.”
The panel and courts were never able to reach a decision as to whether or not the two songs were similar since there wasn’t enough evidence. During the legal battle, Jessie J and her songwriters were represented by Jeffrey M. Movie, Christine Lepara and Elaine K. Kim of Mitchell Silberberg and Knupp LLP. Michael Gross represented Loomis.
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