RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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A federal judge has sided with Bad Bunny and struck down a large portion of a massive copyright lawsuit targeting hundreds of artists over the origins of reggaeton. In a rare move that overturns his own earlier decision, Judge André Birotte Jr. ruled Tuesday (Sept. 1) that reggae duo Steely & Clevie had failed to show that they own valid copyright control over the dembow rhythm — the boom-ch-boom-chick beat heard in almost every reggaeton song.
The earlier decision had sent the case to trial , which would have meant years more litigation in a sprawling case that targets Bunny, Karol G, Daddy Yankee and dozens of other artists over nearly 2,000 songs that are alleged to illegally feature the offending rhythm.
But in a decision obtained and first reported by Billboard , Judge Birotte said he had been swayed to reconsider that ruling by Bad Bunny’s lawyers’ recent argument : that Steely & Clevie were improperly citing multiple songs and mashing them together into a “Frankenstein copyright.”
“Upon further review of the record, the court concludes that plaintiffs have not clearly identified what copyrighted work contains the allegedly protectable selection and arrangement they seek to enforce,” the judge wrote.
The huge case, filed in 2021 by Cleveland “Clevie” Browne and the heirs of Wycliffe “Steely” Johnson, claims their 1989 song “Fish Market” is the ultimate source of dembow . It targets nearly 2,000 songs by more than 150 artists, including Pitbull, Drake, Daddy Yankee, Luis Fonsi and Justin Bieber. Given that extraordinary scale, the defendants and other critics have warned that the case is seeking a monopoly over an entire musical genre.
In a July ruling, the judge said that only a jury could decide whether the arrangement of music elements that makes up the dembow rhythm is copyrightable — a make-or-break issue in the case. But in Tuesday’s decision, Birotte admitted that he had overlooked a key flaw in the lawsuit: that Steely & Clevie’s alleged proprietary beat does not exist entirely in any of the three songs they own.
The judge said that U.S. copyright law does not grant protection to “an abstract amalgamation of elements extracted from multiple independently existing works.” The elements must exist in a single song, Judge Birotte said, and cannot merely be a “collection of similarities assembled for purposes of litigation.”
“Because plaintiffs have not identified a single copyrighted work containing the alleged protectable selection and arrangement, plaintiffs cannot, as a matter of law, proceed on the theory presently pleaded,” the judge wrote.
The ruling is a major victory for Bad Bunny and the other defendants and will end a large portion of the lawsuit. Future litigation remains over songs that allegedly directly sampled Steely & Clevie’s sound recordings, but such claims are far more limited than the dispute over the “compositional” elements struck down by Tuesday’s decision.
An attorney for Steely & Clevie did not immediately return a request for comment. In a statement to Billboard , Bad Bunny’s attorney Kenneth D. Freundlich praised the judge for issuing a ruling that “saw this case for what it was.”
“You cannot copyright a rhythm by reverse-engineering it from three different songs once you’re already in court,” Freundlich said. “Copyright protects what an artist actually created, not a collage assembled in litigation. That is what the court rejected today.”
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