{"id":44383,"date":"2026-09-02T18:01:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T18:01:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/44383\/"},"modified":"2026-09-02T18:01:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T18:01:12","slug":"bad-bunny-scores-big-win-as-judge-reverses-course-in-reggaeton-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/44383\/","title":{"rendered":"Bad Bunny Scores Big Win as Judge Reverses Course in Reggaeton Lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tA federal judge has sided with Bad Bunny<\/a>, Drake<\/a>, and a host of other superstar artists and reversed an earlier ruling that had cleared the way for a trial with potentially broad implications for the reggaeton<\/a> genre.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the new ruling obtained by Rolling Stone, the judge said lawyers for Bad Bunny persuaded him <\/a>that he erred in a decision last July when he found that a jury should decide whether an estimated 1,800 reggaeton songs by more than 100 artists infringed the composition copyright held by Cleveland \u201cClevie\u201d Browne and the heirs of Wycliffe \u201cSteely\u201d Johnson for the 1989 song \u201cFish Market.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe plaintiffs had claimed the song was the source of reggaeton\u2019s so-called dembow rhythm, the signature percussion pattern that helped define the genre. But after reconsidering the issue following a tense hearing covered live by Rolling Stone, U.S. District Judge Andr\u00e9 Birotte Jr. said he would no longer allow the composition copyright claims<\/a> to proceed to trial.<\/p>\n

\n\tBirotte said the defendants successfully argued that Steely & Clevie appeared to be seeking to enforce a copyright based on a combination of musical elements drawn from different songs, a theory he said copyright law does not support.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cUpon further review of the record, the court concludes that plaintiffs have not clearly identified what copyrighted work contains the allegedly protectable selection and arrangement they seek to enforce,\u201d he wrote. \u201cBecause plaintiffs have not identified a single copyrighted work containing the alleged protectable selection and arrangement, plaintiffs cannot, as a matter of law, proceed on the theory presently pleaded.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the hearing last month, Bad Bunny\u2019s lawyers, who were joined by attorneys from the other artists in the lawsuit, argued the musical elements that the judge found potentially protectable \u2014 referred to in the case as the \u201cFish Market Elements\u201d \u2014 were actually a \u201cpastiche\u201d assembled from different portions of different songs.<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\tKenneth Freundlich, the lead lawyer for Bad Bunny, pointed to sworn testimony in which Clevie Browne said the two-measure pattern identified as \u201cFish Market\u201d in the complaint actually was made up of \u201ctwo bars not connected in the song \u2018Fish Market.\u2019\u201d Freundlich said Browne testified that the first bar came from the opening measure of \u201cFish Market,\u201d while the second came from bar 22.<\/p>\n

\n\tFreundlich further argued that two-bar timbale loop identified as protectable in the complaint appears only in the related song \u201cPounder (Dub Mix II),\u201d which does not contain the tambourine element identified as protectable in \u201cFish Market.\u201d He also noted that Steely & Clevie do not own the composition copyright for \u201cPounder,\u201d only the copyright to its sound recording. (Jamaican producer Dennis \u201cThe Mennace\u201d Halliburton owns the composition copyright and is not a party to the lawsuit.)<\/p>\n

\n\tJudge Birotte\u2019s new ruling ends a large portion of the lawsuit that Freundlich argued would have created \u201ca complete mess,\u201d with discovery and trial preparation involving roughly 1,800 songs by scores of prominent artists, including Karol G<\/a>, Anitta, Pitbull<\/a>, Justin Bieber<\/a> and Daddy Yankee<\/a>, potentially \u201ctaking us into 2035.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe court has now confirmed what the defendants have maintained from the outset: that copyright protects an original, single work, not a combination of elements assembled from several different songs for the purpose of a lawsuit,\u201d Freundlich said in a statement reacting to the ruling. \u201cThis is a significant result not only for [Bad Bunny\u2019s label and management company] Rimas and Bad Bunny, but for the many artists who were swept into this case, and for the integrity of copyright law itself. We are grateful to Judge Birotte for reconsidering this critical threshold issue and for recognizing that, to maintain a federal copyright case, a plaintiff must identify a single copyrighted work that actually embodies the arrangement it claims to own.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\tThe judge said the parties now must propose a schedule for addressing the remaining claims, which involve allegations that various artists directly sampled Steely & Clevie\u2019s sound recordings. That portion of the case is far narrower.<\/p>\n

\n\tBad Bunny previously denied allegations that dozens of his reggaeton songs infringed Steely & Clevie\u2019s work, including \u201cTit\u00ed Me Pregunt\u00f3,\u201d \u201cUn Ratito\u201d and \u201cUna Vez.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A federal judge has sided with Bad Bunny, Drake, and a host of other superstar artists and reversed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44384,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[28865,5794,28866,28867,23364,5,2056,28868,28869,28870],"class_list":["post-44383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-italy","tag-bad-bunny","tag-controversy","tag-courts-and-crime","tag-daddy-yankee","tag-drake","tag-italy","tag-justin-bieber","tag-karol-g","tag-pitbull","tag-reggaeton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}