Saturday, January 19, 2008

Beyonce Wins Appeal for Copyright Infringement Lawsuit

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld the 2006 trial court decision dismissing a copyright infringement lawsuit brought against Beyoncé and the co-authors of the Grammy(r) Award-winning, number one hit song "Baby Boy."
In response to the appellate court's decision, Beyoncé said, "It's unfortunate that we had to endure this long legal process but I am hopeful this decision will allow all of us that were involved to finally move on."

The plaintiff, Jennifer Armour, asserted in the lawsuit that her former manager submitted demo recordings of a song to Mathew Knowles (President, Music World Entertainment), representatives of Beyoncé's record label Columbia Records, a division of Sony BMG Music Entertainment, and others, in late February or early March 2003. She discovered in the litigation, however, that the writing and recording of "Baby Boy" was substantially complete before Armour claimed to have submitted her demo recording.

The trial court dismissed the plaintiff's case because, the court determined, no reasonable person could conclude that the two songs sounded substantially similar to one another. The appellate court did not reach that question, but instead upheld the dismissal of the case on the grounds that "Baby Boy" was in existence before Armour allegedly submitted her demos.

1 comment:

©HomelyVixen said...

©HomelyVixen was created by someone else. The person decided to email Beyonce from myspace.com/hmlyvxn and Beyonce took the Vixen and other elements from the original creators's website, adapted them and re-created I am… Sasha Fierce; its nothing new with Beyonce, she has a history.

Homely: simple, without artificial refinements, e.g. a homely child (thefreeonlinedictionary); Vixen: a female fox, a malicious woman with a fierce temper (princeton.edu); hence: Sasha Fierce, the name of a homely child with the characteristic(s) of a vixen.

Sweet Dreams, Halo and the single for Single Ladies were taken from photos off http://www.myspace.com/hmlyvxn. The original author did not know until Columbia, Music World and Sony released the album I am… Sasha Fierce.

I used to love Beyonce until I saw the similarities between the website and Beyonce’s work. Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams don’t seem to have this problem.

Ego was taken from lyrics of the original called Seraph (the station of an angel).

There are other similarities between the two works, the record labels have failed to comment or provide electronically backdated evidence to support the claim that Sasha Fierce was created in 2003 or that the works created were not derivative works of ©HomelyVixen.

www.myspace.com/hmlyvxn