16 December 2014Copyright

Beyoncé slammed with copyright claim

Pop star Beyoncé has been hit with a copyright infringement lawsuit over vocals used in her song Drunk in Love.

Hungarian musician Mónika Juhász-Miczura, who goes by the name Mitsou, has claimed that Beyoncé used her vocals from her Bajba, Bajba Pélem song, which was recorded in 1995.

According to the documents filed at the Supreme Court of the State of New York, New York County, Mitsou’s vocals are used for more than one and a half minutes in the five minute song.  Mitsou says her voice is used to “evoke a foreign eroticism alongside the sexually intense lyrics”.

The musician Jay-Z and music producer Timbaland have also been named in the lawsuit for their contribution to the song.

Drunk in Love features on the album Beyoncé, which was released in December 2013. It was released without any promotion but generated more than 828,000 sales on Apple’s iTunes store.

The official video for the song has been viewed on the video hosting website YouTube more than 237 million times.

Mitsou is seeking damages and an injunction against further distribution of the song.

Beyoncé has experience dealing with copyright infringement claims. In 2007, she was acquitted from a claim made by US musician Jennifer Armour that she used parts of her song in the track Baby Boy without permission.

In 2011, Beyoncé was triumphant in a copyright infringement claim made by Belgian dance artist Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker that parts of the choreography in the music video Countdown, released in 2011, took parts of De Keersmaeker’s choreography from the film Rosas danst Rosas.

The song at the centre of the dispute:

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