{"id":4628,"date":"2025-03-11T16:05:57","date_gmt":"2025-03-11T16:05:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/judge-skeptical-of-her-bid-to-end-case\/"},"modified":"2025-03-11T16:05:57","modified_gmt":"2025-03-11T16:05:57","slug":"judge-skeptical-of-her-bid-to-end-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/judge-skeptical-of-her-bid-to-end-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge Skeptical Of Her Bid To End Case"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tMiley Cyrus<\/a> seems unlikely to immediately escape a copyright lawsuit filed over allegations that her Grammy-winning \u201cFlowers\u201d infringed the Bruno Mars<\/a> song \u201cWhen I Was Your Man.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tA Los Angeles federal judge \u201crepeatedly indicated\u201d at a live court hearing Monday that he would likely deny a motion to dismiss the case filed last year by attorneys for Cyrus, according to a report by Rolling Stone<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn that motion, the singer had argued that the plaintiff in the case \u2013 not Mars himself, but an financial entity called Tempo Music Investments that bought out the rights of one of his co-writers \u2013 lacked the necessary legal \u201cstanding\u201d to pursue its claims.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut at the hearing, Judge Dean D. Pregerson<\/strong> appeared skeptical, according to RS <\/em>\u2013 at times seeming to endorse arguments from Tempo\u2019s lawyers that granting the motion would gut longstanding music industry practices. He reportedly asked Cyrus\u2019 lawyer why anyone would buy partial shares in songs \u201cknowing they could never enforce it\u201d without the consent of all the other songwriters.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe judge did not immediately decide the motion at Monday\u2019s hearing and will instead issue a written ruling in the weeks or months ahead.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFlowers,\u201d which spent eight weeks atop the Hot 100, has been linked to \u201cYour Man\u201d since it was released in January 2023. Many fans immediately saw it as an \u201canswer song,\u201d with lyrics that clearly referenced Mars\u2019 song. The reason, according to internet sleuths, was that \u201cYour Man\u201d was a favorite of Cyrus\u2019 ex-husband Liam Hemsworth \u2013 and her allusions were a nod to their divorce.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen \u201cFlowers\u201d was first released, legal experts told Billboard<\/em> that Cyrus was likely not violating copyrights simply by using similar lyrics to fire back at the earlier song \u2013 a time-honored music industry tradition utilized by songs ranging from Lynyrd Skynyrd<\/a>\u2019s \u201cSweet Home Alabama\u201d to countless rap diss records.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut Tempo sued in September, claiming \u201cFlowers\u201d had lifted numerous elements beyond the clap-back lyrics, including \u201cmelodic and harmonic material,\u201d \u201cpitch ending pattern,\u201d and \u201cbass-line structure.\u201d Tempo, which had purchased a fractional share in the song from co-writer Philip Lawrence<\/strong>, argued it was \u201cundeniable\u201d that Cyrus\u2019 hit \u201cwould not exist\u201d if not for \u201cYour Man.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn her first response in November, attorneys for Miley said that the total lack of involvement from Mars and the song\u2019s two other co-writers was not some procedural quirk in the case, but rather a \u201cfatal flaw\u201d that required the outright dismissal of the lawsuit.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cPlaintiff unambiguously [says] that it obtained its claimed rights in the \u2018When I Was Your Man\u2019 copyright from only one of that musical composition\u2019s four co-authors,\u201d wrote Peter Anderson<\/strong>, the star\u2019s lead attorney. \u201cThat is a fatal and incurable defect in plaintiff\u2019s claim.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a statement at the time, Tempo Music lead counsel Alex Weingarten<\/strong> told Billboard<\/em> that the argument from Cyrus was \u201cintellectually dishonest\u201d and that the group clearly had standing to pursue the lawsuit: \u201cThey\u2019re seeking to make bogus technical arguments because they don\u2019t have an actual substantive defense to the case.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIf the motion is denied, lawyers for Cyrus will likely shift focus to those substantive arguments. In previous filings, they have argued that the two songs have \u201cstriking differences\u201d and that any similarities are not covered by copyright law: \u201cThe songwriter defendants categorically deny copying, and the allegedly copied elements are random, scattered, unprotected ideas and musical building blocks.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Miley Cyrus seems unlikely to immediately escape a copyright lawsuit filed over allegations that her Grammy-winning \u201cFlowers\u201d infringed the Bruno Mars song \u201cWhen I Was Your Man.\u201d A […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4629,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2610,294,423,2020],"class_list":["post-4628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-bid","tag-case","tag-judge","tag-skeptical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4628","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=4628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4628\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}