Shakira copyright case dismissed after fake tape confirmed

A US judge who previously ruled that a song by pop star Shakira infringed copyright belonging to a Dominican Republic-based songwriter has thrown the case out of court.

Judge Alvin Hellerstein said the songwriter, Ramon Arias Vasquez, had submitted fake evidence in his quest to prove that Shakira’s song “Loca” infringed his copyright.

In a ruling handed down yesterday, August 10, at the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, Hellerstein said that Sony, the defendant in the case, had submitted “competent and substantial proof” that Vasquez’s copyright was not valid.

The dispute, which can be dated back to 2012, centres on the song “Loca con su Tiguere”, which Vasquez claimed he composed in the late 1990s.

New York-based Mayimba Music, which owns the rights to his work, sued Sony, which distributed Shakira’s song.

In August last year, Hellerstein ruled that “Loca”, released in 2010, contained segments that “were clearly copied from” Vasquez’s track.

Hellerstein found that Vasquez’s song was recorded onto a cassette tape in 1998. A copy of the song on the tape was registered at the US Copyright Office in 2011.

But after the judgment, and before damages were due to be decided, Sony submitted evidence that it said proved the tape was a fake and was in fact made in 2011, a year after the Shakira song was released.

In May this year WIPR reported that Hellerstein had ordered Sony and Mayimba Music to appear at a seven-day hearing in August after he expressed doubts about the validity of the Vasquez’s copyright claim.

In yesterday’s ruling Hellerstein threw out the case.

Shakira’s track, a collaboration with rapper Eduard Edwin Bello Pou, better known as ‘El Cata’, was widely released as a single around the world and reached the top of the US’s Latin Music Billboard charts.

Neither Mayimba Music nor Sony had responded to a request for comment at the time of publication but we will update the story should either party get in touch.