{"id":10629,"date":"2026-05-08T19:44:01","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T19:44:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/jason-derulo-wins-savage-love-song-copyright-trial\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T19:44:01","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T19:44:01","slug":"jason-derulo-wins-savage-love-song-copyright-trial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/jason-derulo-wins-savage-love-song-copyright-trial\/","title":{"rendered":"Jason Derulo Wins \u2018Savage Love\u2019 Song Copyright Trial"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n\tJason Derulo has emerged victorious in a copyright trial over the writing and production credits on his 2020 chart-topper \u201cSavage Love.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tA jury in Los Angeles handed down a verdict on Thursday (May 7) rejecting the claims brought by session musician Matthew Spatola against Derulo and Columbia Records. This means Spatola won\u2019t recover any royalties from \u201cSavage Love,\u201d a viral TikTok hit from August 2020 that later hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 thanks to a remix featuring BTS.<\/p>\n

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\n\tA rep for Spatola declined to comment following the verdict. Reps for Derulo and Columbia did not immediately return requests for comment. <\/p>\n

\n\tSpatola, who played guitar and bass on \u201cSavage Love,\u201d argued during the two-week trial that he also had a hand in crafting the instrumentals and was thus entitled to writing and production splits. Derulo denied this, testifying in court that Spatola just played what he was told and \u201ccreated absolutely nothing\u201d for the song.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe case, which has been making its way through the court system since 2023, highlighted the prevalence \u2014 and potential pitfalls \u2014 of informal dealings between artists and their musical collaborators. It is undisputed that Spatola was paid a $2,000 fee for two studio sessions in April 2020. But it\u2019s also undisputed that he and Derulo never formally signed a so-called work-for-hire agreement.<\/p>\n

\n\tUnder copyright law, a work-for-hire agreement confirms that a musician does not have authorship rights despite contributing to a song. In this case, no such deal was signed; Derulo merely texted Spatola after the fact, asking, \u201c1K good each day?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSpatola alleged that the absence of work-for-hire paperwork was proof that he was more than just a session musician. Derulo countered that these forms just fell through the cracks because \u201cSavage Love\u201d was recorded at the height of COVID-19 quarantine restrictions, \u201cso the people that would typically be in place to give him an agreement just weren\u2019t there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tJurors ultimately sided with Derulo after deliberating for just over a day, finding that Spatola hadn\u2019t proved he was a joint author of either the \u201cSavage Love\u201d composition or master recording. They did not give any explanation for their verdict, as is typical.<\/p>\n


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Jason Derulo has emerged victorious in a copyright trial over the writing and production credits on his 2020 chart-topper \u201cSavage Love.\u201d A jury in Los Angeles handed down […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10630,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[429,5185,5184,146,2058,986,342,882],"class_list":["post-10629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-copyright","tag-derulo","tag-jason","tag-love","tag-savage","tag-song","tag-trial","tag-wins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10629\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}