Another music industry lawsuit…
Justin Beiber’s 2010 hit song ‘Somebody To Love’ on his ‘My Word 2.0’ album came under fire back in 2013 when he and his producer and mentor, Usher were accused of copyright infringement.
The lawsuit was brought forward by singer De Rico and songwriter Mareio Overton who accused both Beiber and Usher of copying their song also titled ‘Somebody To Love’ off their album ‘My Story II’.
Despite the songs having the same name and the similarities in the album titles, a judge dismissed the case in 2014 as they found significant differences in the songs and decided that it didn’t constitute a copyright infringement lawsuit.
However, in June 2015 the US Circuit of Appeals in Virginia voted to re-open the lawsuit, as they switched the focus to the similarities between the two versions of the songs instead of the differences that they earlier focused on.
Since then, the case has been ongoing.
However, Beiber keeps failing to show up to depositions. He first canceled a deposition in Los Angeles on March 21st so it got rescheduled for Thursday 14th April. But, Beiber cancelled on the day stating that he was ‘unable to sit for deposition’.
Bieber has also reportedly offered ”significant sums of money to get [the songwriters’] agreement to forego Bieber’s deposition entirely.” The file also states that he hasn’t complied with discovery requests and has being giving ”extremely limited and non-responsive” answers throughout the case.
As a result he has now been ordered to pay $10 million and the court has scheduled discovery be completed by April 18th.
(Image by Joe Bielawa, Creative Commons, Attribution 2.0 Generic, cc by 2.0)
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