Miley Cyrus is calling for the immediate dismissal of a lawsuit alleging she and her fellow songwriters copied portions of a Bruno Mars single when they wrote her Grammy-winning banger “Flowers.”
In a new dismissal motion filed in federal court in Los Angeles, Cyrus and her co-songwriters reject any claim they copied protectable elements of Mars’ 2013 Hot 100-charting song “When I Was Your Man” when they penned “Flowers.” But they claim the case has a more pressing “incurable defect,” arguing that the investment firm behind the lawsuit has no right to sue without the other co-authors of the song, including Mars, being involved. Mars, notably, is not a party to the lawsuit.
“The songwriter defendants categorically deny copying, and the allegedly copied elements are random, scattered, unprotected ideas and musical building blocks. However, plaintiff’s claim suffers another fatal flaw that mandates dismissal at the pleading stage: the Copyright Act expressly provides that only a legal or beneficial owner of an exclusive copyright right may sue for infringement. Plaintiff is neither and, as a result, it lacks standing to bring this action,” the new motion obtained by Rolling Stone reads.
The Mars song at issue was co-written by Mars, Philip Lawrence, Ari Levine, and Andrew Wyatt. The plaintiff in the case is Tempo Music Investments, which purchased Lawrence’s share. According to Cyrus’ motion, filed by prominent lawyer Peter Anderson, Tempo lacks the necessary “exclusive” standing because it only obtained rights from one of the song’s four coauthors and can’t act “unilaterally.”
“That is a fatal and incurable defect in plaintiff’s claim,” the new filing argues. “An assignee of only one co-author lacks exclusive rights and, therefore, also lacks standing to sue for infringement.” The motion asks for a dismissal without any chance to amend.
Tempo’s lawyer responded Thursday by calling the new motion a “bogus technical argument.” He said the copyright law in question limits the rights of assignees or licensees of copyright stakes, not the actual owners. In this case, his client is the full owner of Lawrence’s share, he said.
“We’re not an assignee. We’re an owner,” lawyer Alex Weingarten tells Rolling Stone. “It’s an intellectually dishonest motion and an obvious dilatory tactic. They say nothing about the substance of the case because this is blatant copyright infringement.”
In the lawsuit filed last September, Tempo alleges “Flowers” duplicates “numerous melodic, harmonic, and lyrical elements of ‘When I Was Your Man,’ including the melodic pitch design and sequence of the verse, the connecting bassline, certain bars of the chorus, certain theatrical music elements, lyric elements, and specific chord progressions.” The filing calls it “undeniable” that “[“Flowers”] would not exist without ‘When I Was Your Man.’”
In the new dismissal motion, Cyrus and her co-writers argue that plenty of songs share a few chords, pitches or words, and that copyright law does not prohibit this. They also argue the two songs “show striking differences in melody, chords, other musical elements, and words.”
The complaint names Cyrus’ fellow songwriters Gregory Hein and Michael Pollack as co-defendants alongside Sony Music Publishing and distributors including Apple, Target and Walmart. A hearing on the new dismissal motion was not immediately set.
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