Dua Lipa scored a legal victory in a copyright lawsuit over her 2020 smash “Levitating” after a judge dismissed the case.
Lipa was initially hit with a pair of “Levitating” copyright lawsuits in March 2022, one from Florida reggae group named Artikal Sound System that was dismissed in June 2023, and another from L. Russell Brown and Sandy Linzer. Judge Katherine Polk Failla dismissed the latter earlier today in New York court, explaining that the commonalities between songs were not protectable under copyright law.
In their initial suit, Brown and Linzer accused Lipa of copying both their 1979 song “Wiggle and Giggle All Night” and 1980 song “Don Diablo,” two tracks dating from the disco era. They stated that the opening melody of “Levitating” was a “duplicate” of the melody to their songs and claimed that Lipa herself had “admitted that she deliberately emulated prior eras” in the press and “took inspiration” to create a “retro” sound.
But the judge in today’s ruling concluded that the copyright infringement claim failed as it pertained to a descending scale common in all three songs that had an additional note in “Levitating.” The judge cited the Structured Asset Sales, LLC v. Ed Sheeran case — a copyright suit that Sheeran won in 2023 over claims he copied Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On” — as precedent, stating that “a chord progression and harmonic rhythm, in combination, could not constitute protectable expression under copyright law.”
The judge noted that the court agreed with the plaintiffs that a “layperson” could hear similarities between the songs, but that “there can be no substantial similarity (and thus no copyright violation) as a matter of law, because ‘the similarity between [the] works concerns only non-copyrightable elements of the [P]laintiff[s’] work.”
Jason T. Brown, an attorney for Linzer and Brown, said in a statement to Variety that they “respectfully disagree” with the court’s ruling and intend to appeal. “Even the defense expert acknowledged that people can hear the similarities between Don Diablo and Levitating,” he said. “But under recent case law — including the Structured Asset Sales v. Sheeran decision — courts have become increasingly focused on what can be dissected and filtered out on paper, rather than what is felt through the music itself. There’s a growing disconnect between how these cases are decided — by academically analyzing briefs, bar lines, and musical notation — versus how audiences actually experience music. The soul of a song doesn’t live in a court brief. It lives in the sound, the feel, and the performance — and that’s what juries should be allowed to hear and judge.”
Representatives for Lipa did not immediately respond to Variety‘s request for comment.
Lipa is still facing a separate copyright lawsuit regarding “Levitating,” as producer Bosko Kante sued her in 2023 for allegedly using a talkbox recording without permission on the track’s remixes.
