Beyoncé survives copyright claim

Musician Beyoncé has survived a claim that her song “XO” had infringed the copyright of another singer.

In a judgment handed down last week the US District Court for the Southern District of New York rebuffed Ahmad Javon Lane’s claim that the song infringed the copyright of his earlier track.

At the centre of Lane’s claim, filed in August last year, was the “sequence 4-bar introduction”, commonly referred to as the beat, used in Beyoncé’s song.

According to Lane, on June 20 2013, he sent a digital copy of his song, called “ XOXO”, to one of Beyoncé’s backing dancers. Two days later, he registered the lyrics to the song with the US Copyright Office.

Beyoncé released her “ XO” track in December of that year.

Responding to the lawsuit Beyoncé said that Lane’s claim should not stand because he only owned rights to the lyrics and not the beat.

Judge Paul Engelmayer, presiding over the case, threw out the lawsuit on October 21.

Firstly, he agreed with Beyoncé that Lane’s claim over the issue of the beat lacked standing because he only owned copyright to the lyrics.

Responding to Lane’s assertion that the lyrics were also similar, Engelmayer said that “no reasonable jury could find the lyrics of ‘XO’ and ‘XOXO’ substantially similar”.

“Indeed, aside from the fact that both songs’ lyrics use the letters ‘X’ and ‘O’, there is virtually nothing common to the two songs lyrics. The use in music or other parlance of these two letters is hardly unusual,” he added.