Country singer Carrie Underwood wins copyright case

US country singers Carrie Underwood and Brad Paisley have won a copyright infringement suit over their song “Remind Me”.

The long-awaited verdict has been three years in the making, with Amy Bowen, a songwriter known as Lizza Connor, having accused the pair of copying her song of the same name.

The  ruling was made on August 25 in the US District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee Nashville Division by Judge Aleta Trauger, who dismissed the case.

Bowen claimed that in 2008 she had performed the song during a songwriters’ workshop. Speakers at the workshop included Kelley Lovelace and Chris DuBois, co-writers of Paisley’s “Remind Me” song. They were both named as defendants.

Bowen also claimed that she sang the song for Lovelace and he provided her with a critique.

Judith Finnell, Bowen’s musicologist who testified in court, focused on the fact that the phrases ‘remind me’ and ‘baby, remind me’ were present in both songs, which she identified as the hook in both works, making the songs “substantially similar”.

But Trauger disagreed, ruling that Bowen had failed to show that the “defendants’ use of some of the same musical techniques and melodic features was similar enough to her use of the same techniques and features to render the expressions of the hook phrases in the two works substantially similar”.

Last week, WIPR reported that Ariana Grande was the latest high-profile artist to face a copyright infringement complaint after a songwriter claimed her hit “One Last Time” copied one of his tracks.