{"id":11092,"date":"2026-07-03T17:47:56","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T17:47:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/judge-punts-giant-reggaeton-lawsuit-against-bad-bunny-karol-g-more\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T17:47:56","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T17:47:56","slug":"judge-punts-giant-reggaeton-lawsuit-against-bad-bunny-karol-g-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/judge-punts-giant-reggaeton-lawsuit-against-bad-bunny-karol-g-more\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge Punts Giant Reggaeton Lawsuit Against Bad Bunny, Karol G & More"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n\tA federal judge is refusing to decide whether reggaeton duo Steely & Clevie invented the genre\u2019s signature dembow rhythm, ruling that only a jury can make that conclusion in a sprawling copyright lawsuit targeting Bad Bunny, Karol G and more than a hundred other artists.<\/p>\n

\n\tJudge Andr\u00e9 Birotte Jr. dropped a long-awaited summary judgment ruling on Thursday (July 2) in the long-running case alleging that nearly 2,000 tracks by more than 150 artists copied Steely & Clevie\u2019s 1989 song \u201cFish Market.\u201d In this first phase of the litigation, Cleveland \u201cClevie\u201d Browne and the heirs of Wycliffe \u201cSteely\u201d Johnson asked the judge to determine that \u201cFish Market\u201d was indeed the original, copyrightable source of dembow \u2014 the boom-ch-boom-chick<\/em> percussion that\u2019s now a hallmark of reggaeton.<\/p>\n

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\n\tLawyers representing the many defendants \u2014 including Pitbull, Drake, Daddy Yankee, Luis Fonsi and Justin Bieber, plus units of all three major music companies \u2014 countered that Steely & Clevie have no valid copyright claim because this sonic element \u201cexists in countless prior works and musical genres,\u201d including the centuries-old habanera rhythm.<\/p>\n

\n\tThursday\u2019s ruling, first obtained and reported by Billboard<\/em>, essentially kicks the can down the road on the dispute. Judge Birotte said both sides have built credible cases that conflict directly with each other, meaning a jury trial is the only proper method to decide whether \u201cFish Market\u201d is copyrightable as the origin of dembow.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe evidentiary record presents competing, facially credible expert opinions regarding what elements exist in the claimed works, how those elements function musically, whether they are commonplace or original, and whether they form a coherent and protectable selection and arrangement,\u201d wrote the judge. \u201cVirtually none of these facts fall into the undisputed category that the court may consider on a motion for summary judgment. Put simply, plaintiffs\u2019 experts advance one account of the relevant musical features and their significance, while defendants\u2019 experts offer a fundamentally different interpretation of those same features. These are classic disputes of fact, not law.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tNow, the lawsuit will head to a second phase of discovery on the question of infringement \u2014 that is, whether there\u2019s evidence that more than 150 defendants in the case had access to \u201cFish Market\u201d and did indeed copy it for the various songs at issue, including chart-toppers like \u201cDespacito\u201d, \u201cTit\u00ed Me Pregunt\u00f3\u201d and \u201cDame Tu Cosita.\u201d Further briefing and a potential jury trial will follow unless the many litigants can all agree on a settlement.<\/p>\n

\n\tA lawyer for Steely & Clevie, Stephen Doniger<\/strong>, told Billboard <\/em>in a Thursday statement, \u201cWe are pleased that the court largely rejected the defendants\u2019 arguments but disappointed that it did not grant our client\u2019s affirmative summary judgment motion.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt is hard to imagine how any jury could find the\u00a0Dem Bow Riddim<\/em>\u00a0to be anything other than an original and protectable work given the undisputed evidence that it is made up of seven discrete elements combined in a way that no one has found in any work predating our clients\u2019\u00a0\u2018Fish Market,’\u201d added Doniger. \u201cThat said, we have little doubt that a jury will see through [the defendants\u2019] arguments and we look forward to the next steps in this case.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe legal team representing the majority of defendants in the case did not immediately return a request for comment. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe dembow case is a big deal because of its sheer scope, with hundreds of millions of dollars in potential damages at stake. Experts have also warned that it could have an immensely disruptive impact on reggaeton \u2014 a booming genre that has risen alongside Bad Bunny from the clubs of Puerto Rico to the stages of the Grammys and the Super Bowl Halftime Show. Back in 2023, Duke University law professor Jennifer Jenkins<\/strong> told Billboard <\/em>that a win for Steely & Clevie \u201cwould confer a monopoly over an entire genre, something unprecedented in music copyright litigation.\u201d<\/p>\n


\"Billboard
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A federal judge is refusing to decide whether reggaeton duo Steely & Clevie invented the genre\u2019s signature dembow rhythm, ruling that only a jury can make that conclusion […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11093,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[784,1519,728,423,5107,303,8207,1520],"class_list":["post-11092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-bad","tag-bunny","tag-giant","tag-judge","tag-karol","tag-lawsuit","tag-punts","tag-reggaeton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11092","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=11092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11092\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}