{"id":2430,"date":"2024-08-28T20:04:00","date_gmt":"2024-08-28T20:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/missy-elliott-to-face-trial-in-copyright-lawsuit-but-aaliyah-song-cut\/"},"modified":"2024-08-28T20:04:00","modified_gmt":"2024-08-28T20:04:00","slug":"missy-elliott-to-face-trial-in-copyright-lawsuit-but-aaliyah-song-cut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/missy-elliott-to-face-trial-in-copyright-lawsuit-but-aaliyah-song-cut\/","title":{"rendered":"Missy Elliott to Face Trial in Copyright Lawsuit, But Aaliyah Song Cut"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n

\n\tA federal judge says Missy Elliott must face trial in a lawsuit filed by a man who claims to have co-written several of her decades-old songs, though the judge dismissed allegations over one particular song released by Aaliyah.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a ruling Tuesday (Aug. 27), Judge Nitza I. Qui\u00f1ones Alejandro<\/strong> refused to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Terry Williams, who claims he and Elliott collaborated on numerous songs in the 1990s but that she refused to credit him as a co-writer.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor four of the five allegedly co-written songs \u2014 tracks released by her 1990s R&B group Sista \u2014 Elliott\u2019s attorneys argued that she did not even meet Williams until after the songs had been produced. But Williams disputes that point, and the judge said a jury would have to decide who was right.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cConsidering these conflicting arguments and evidence, a genuine issue of material fact exists as to whether Williams and Elliott were working together at the time of the production of the SISTA album \u2026 and whether Williams\u2019 contributions to the Unpublished Songs were used on derivative songs released on the album,\u201d Judge Alejandro wrote.<\/p>\n

\n\tHowever, the judge did toss out one of Williams\u2019 key allegations: that he and Elliott had co-written \u201cHeartbroken,\u201d a 1996 track released by the late Aaliyah. The judge ruled Williams had known for decades that he had not been credited on the track but waited until 2018 to sue \u2014 meaning his efforts to sue over the song are barred by the statute of limitations.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cConsidering the success of Aaliyah\u2019s One in a Million<\/em> album, on which \u2018Heartbroken\u2019 was released, and Williams\u2019 work in the music industry after the album\u2019s release, including with Elliott, a reasonable person in Williams\u2019 position would have been on notice of the use of his unpublished song in the purportedly derivative song Heartbroken by Aaliyah,\u201d Judge Alejandro wrote.<\/p>\n

\n\tMonday\u2019s ruling does not mean Williams has won his lawsuit. The decision, which largely rejected Elliott\u2019s motion for so-called summary judgment, leaves the case headed toward a trial, where Williams will need to prove his allegations in front of a jury.<\/p>\n

\n\tNeither side immediately returned requests for comment on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A federal judge says Missy Elliott must face trial in a lawsuit filed by a man who claims to have co-written several of her decades-old songs, though the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2431,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3200,429,3021,3199,422,303,3198,986,342],"class_list":["post-2430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-aaliyah","tag-copyright","tag-cut","tag-elliott","tag-face","tag-lawsuit","tag-missy","tag-song","tag-trial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2430","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=2430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2430\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}