Dua Lipa has secured the dismissal of a lawsuit that accused her of plagiarizing her hit single “Levitating” from two other songs.
In 2022, songwriters L Russell Brown and Sandy Linzer sued her, alleging she copied their 1979 disco track “Wiggle and Giggle All Night” and their 1980 song “Don Diablo.”
US Judge Katherine Polk Failla ruled on Thursday that the similarities between the songs were general and involved musical elements that are not copyrightable, which have been used in the past by artists like Mozart, Gilbert and Sullivan, and the Bee Gees in “Stayin’ Alive.”
This marks the second victory for Lipa in copyright cases involving “Levitating,” which became a worldwide sensation in 2020.
She had faced a previous lawsuit from the Florida reggae band Artikal Sound System, which claimed that Lipa had copied the chorus of their 2015 song “Live Your Life.”
The case was dismissed in 2023 when a judge found no proof that Lipa and her co-writers had “access” to the song beforehand—a crucial aspect of copyright claims.
Nonetheless, Lipa is still embroiled in another lawsuit over the song, this time with Bosko Kante, a contributing artist on “Levitating” who provided talk box vocals.
Kante filed his lawsuit in 2023, alleging unauthorized use of his contributions in remixes of the track.
He is asking for damages of no less than $2 million plus interest, and a share of the remixes’ profits, which he estimates to be at least $20 million.
Brown and Linzer argued that Lipa had appropriated the initial melody of “Levitating,” where the lyrics go: “If you wanna run away with me, I know a galaxy and I can take you for a ride.”
They described the melody and its delivery as a “carbon copy” of their own work.
However, Judge Failla stated that such elements are too ubiquitous to warrant copyright protection.
“The court finds that a musical style, defined by plaintiffs as ‘pop with a disco feel,’ and a musical function, defined by plaintiffs to include ‘entertainment and dancing,’ cannot possibly be protectable,” the judge wrote.
“To hold otherwise would be to completely foreclose the further development of music in that genre or for that purpose.”
Interestingly, the ruling coincided with the fifth anniversary of the release of “Levitating,” initially part of Lipa’s critically acclaimed album “Future Nostalgia.”
Following the ruling, attorneys for Brown and Linzer expressed their disagreement with the outcome in a statement to Billboard and announced plans to appeal.
