{"id":4844,"date":"2025-03-22T02:49:48","date_gmt":"2025-03-22T02:49:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/miley-cyrus-loses-bid-to-end-flowers-lawsuit-over-bruno-mars-song\/"},"modified":"2025-03-22T02:49:48","modified_gmt":"2025-03-22T02:49:48","slug":"miley-cyrus-loses-bid-to-end-flowers-lawsuit-over-bruno-mars-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/miley-cyrus-loses-bid-to-end-flowers-lawsuit-over-bruno-mars-song\/","title":{"rendered":"Miley Cyrus Loses Bid To End ‘Flowers’ Lawsuit Over Bruno Mars Song"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tMiley Cyrus<\/a> has lost her initial bid to dismiss a copyright case claiming her chart-topping \u201cFlowers\u201d ripped off the Bruno Mars<\/a> song \u201cWhen I Was Your Man,\u201d allowing the high-profile lawsuit to proceed toward a trial.<\/p>\n

\n\tSeeking to end the case at the outset, attorneys for Cyrus had argued that the plaintiff who filed the lawsuit lacked the legal \u201cstanding\u201d to pursue it. The case was filed not by Mars himself, but a financial entity called Tempo Music Investments that bought the rights of his co-writer Philip Lawrence<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut in a ruling issued Tuesday, a Los Angeles federal judge rejected that argument, calling it \u201cincorrect\u201d and a \u201cmisunderstanding\u201d of existing legal precedents.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cTempo now steps into Lawrence\u2019s shoes and is a co\u2010owner of the exclusive rights of the copyright,\u201d Judge Dean D. Pregerson<\/strong> wrote. \u201cBecause Lawrence as a co\u2010owner could sue for infringement, Tempo as co\u2010owner, in lieu of Lawrence, can sue for infringement without joining the other co\u2010owners of the copyright.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAttorneys for Cyrus called Tempo\u2019s partial ownership a \u201cfatal and incurable defect in plaintiff\u2019s claim,\u201d but Judge Pregerson ruled that endorsing the star\u2019s argument would be a radical shift in the legal landscape and have a profound economic and creative impact.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSuch a limitation would diminish the value of jointly owned copyrights, because buyers would be less interested in purchasing a copyright that they cannot enforce, thereby disincentivizing co\u2010authorship and collaboration in works,\u201d the judge wrote. \u201cThis would undermine Congress\u2019s intent.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn rejecting it, the judge took Miley\u2019s argument to its rational endpoint: \u201cIf, as songwriter defendants\u2019 arguments seem to suggest, a co\u2010owner\u2019s right to sue for infringement is lost upon transfer, then if all original co\u2010authors transferred their interest, the copyright could never be enforced.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTuesday\u2019s ruling is only an initial decision, and does not mean that Tempo will win its case against Cyrus. As it moves ahead, her attorneys will pivot to more substantive arguments \u2013 that her song simply did not infringe the Mars hit because they share only \u201cunprotected ideas and musical building blocks.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a statement to Billboard <\/em>on Wednesday, Tempo lead attorney Alex Weingarten said: \u201cWe are thrilled but not the least surprised by the ruling.\u00a0Our client is looking forward to having this case proceed to be resolved on its merits and are extremely confident in prevailing.\u201d An attorney for Cyrus did not return a request for comment.<\/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 \u2014 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 \u2014 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 Lawrence, argued it was \u201cundeniable\u201d that Cyrus\u2019 hit \u201cwould not exist\u201d if not for \u201cYour Man.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn her motion to dismiss the case, 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 fatal flaw: \u201cWithout the consent of the other owners, a grant of rights from just one co-owner does not confer standing.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Miley Cyrus has lost her initial bid to dismiss a copyright case claiming her chart-topping \u201cFlowers\u201d ripped off the Bruno Mars song \u201cWhen I Was Your Man,\u201d allowing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4845,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2610,3448,1942,5188,303,1318,3449,3475,986],"class_list":["post-4844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-bid","tag-bruno","tag-cyrus","tag-flowers","tag-lawsuit","tag-loses","tag-mars","tag-miley","tag-song"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4844","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=4844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}