Jessie J & UMG’s 2012 copyright lawsuit comes to a close
British singer and former The Voice Australia judge Jessie J and her co-songwriters did not steal the melody of her 2011 hit Domino from a US indie band, a 9th Circuit appeals judge has agreed with an earlier 2013 decision.
Jessie J (Jessica Cornish), her songwriting team and record company Universal Music Group were sued in 2012 by songwriter Will Loomis. He claimed that Domino had taken the melody from his 2008 song Bright Red Chords which he recorded with his band Loomis & The Lust.
Loomis had emerged with an EP recorded in New York with Rolling Stones bassist Darryl Jones and Divinyls/ Cold Chisel drummer Charlie Drayton. He then moved to California and formed The Lust in 2008. After they split, guitarist Casey Hooper joined Katy Perry’s band and bassist Scott Henson joined the Glee cast.
Domino was written by Jessie J with its producers Lukasz “Dr. Luke” Gottwald and Henry “Cirkut” Walter, with extra writing from Claude Kelly and Max Martin. It was released as the fifth single of her 2011 debut album Who You Are.
It is estimated that Domino has grossed $11 million. In the UK it became her second #1 and was nominated for Best British Single at the 2013 BRIT Awards. In the US it peaked at #6 on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped the Club charts.
Domino was a huge hit in Australia, where it peaked at #5 on the ARIA chart and is certified 4x Platinum. In New Zealand it debuted at #5 and won Platinum status. The single also went #1 in Ireland and Top 5 in Poland and Spain, #7 in Canada, and charted in a dozen European territories.
To prove his case, Loomis made a mashup of the two songs which Universal tried to get pulled off YouTube, which lead Wikinews to cover the story. He also uploaded a letter from Universal dated May 5, 2010 in which it expressed interest in his song and asked him to send them a copy. In an interview with the Who Stole What podcast in July 2014, Loomis alleged that Dr. Luke had a track record of copyright infringements.
Loomis & The Lust were named by MTV as one of the Top 25 Best New Bands in the World in 2010. Bright Red Chords received nationwide airplay in the US, was included on an Urban Outfitters sampler CD of which 40,000 was distributed around the world and featured on the soundtrack of Movie 43.
The argument as to whether the two songs were identical was never tested, because the original District Court and now the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals were first trying to determine the possibility of access.
Both found Loomis had not proven that the Domino team had access to his song.
Loomis for his part suggested that his song could have passed on to the Domino writers through his ex-guitarist working with Katy Perry, and from him to Dr. Luke who produced Perry’s Teenage Dream album.
But Circuit Judge Richard Clifton found no proof this happened. “At bottom, the record consists primarily of Loomis’s speculations of access unsupported by personal knowledge,” Clifton wrote. “The other evidence did not fill the breach.”
The judgement also said that although Bright Red Chords got played on MTV, it was not a hit nor was it widely distributed. It found that “Loomis was able to provide to the District Court documentation of only 46 sales of the recording.”
Loomis’ lawyer Michael Gross says the musician might ask for a rehearsing. “If the opinion stands, it could serve as a blueprint for publishing companies to solicit works that make their way into the companies’ own music,” he said. “The copyright rule the court relied on was not meant to create that opportunity.”
Jessie J, now replacing her blonde hair do with a raven black look, is concentrating on her music again after two seasons as judge on The Voice Australia. She had earlier done a season on The Voice UK from 2012 to 2013.