Miley Cyrus has just failed to have a potentially costly copyright suit dropped, meaning that the part-owners of a Bruno Mars track will now get their day in court, with millions of Cyrus earnings hanging in the balance.
The source of the dispute is Tempo Music Investments which, after securing one-quarter of the copyright of Mars' massive hit 2012’s When I Was Your Man, reckon that that entitles them to a cut of Cyrus Grammy-winning global smash Flowers, a track that it reckons represents an “exploitation” of Mars’ original work.
But this is no Mars vs Cyrus war with artistic integrity at its heart. Instead this is a 100% legal issue with Mars and his other co-writers yet to offer comment or get involved.
Wrecking Ball…
And needless to say Cyrus isn’t happy and has been working through the process of having the case dropped – and quickly.
Such matters place earnings from the tracks involved into stasis and when that hit is a song like Flowers (the lead single from 2023’s Endless Summer Vacation album and the Grammy winner for both that year’s Record Of The Year and Best Pop Solo Performance) that adds up to an awful lot of money being put on ice.
Just ask Ed Sheeran, whose Shape Of You suffered a similar fate, with $20 million of royalties seemingly hanging in the balance before a judge decided that the star didn’t lift its hook from an unsigned rival.
Money for nothing?
Such claims aren’t anything new, but ‘smart’ music investors actively securing the rights to vague, publicly recognised ‘soundalikes’ purely so that they can go on the legal rampage once the ink is dried is certainly on the rise.
A previous good example being when the new rights holder to little thought-of The Jimmy Castor Bunch’s 1972 number six Troglodyte went on the warpath, chasing payment from any '80s hip hop artist who’d been foolish enough to sample its “What we’re gonna do here is go back… Way back… Back into time…” and think that they could get away with it.
And the case against Men At Work’s Down Under, brought by the rightful owners of the children’s nursery rhyme Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree is a cautionary tale that’s as sad as it is surprising.
Nothing Breaks Like A Lawsuit…
This latest case comes from Tempo Music Investments, the new owners of the share of the copyright previously owned by one of When I Was Your Man’s four co-writers, Phil Lawrence (who wrote it alongside Mars, Ari Levine and Andrew Wyatt and co-produced the track with Levine and Wyatt under the pseudonym The Smeezingtons).
Other big names featured in the suit (and doubtless working as fast as possible to make it go away) include Cyrus’s co-writers Gregory Hein and Michael Pollack, Sony Music Publishing and even Apple, Target, and Walmart, who are being fingered as distributers of her contentious track.
And, rather than panic, Cyrus simply got legal.
Last year, Cyrus’s attorney Peter Anderson laid out their counter, citing that TMI’s claim featured a fatal flaw: “Plaintiff unambiguously [says] that it obtained its claimed rights in the When I Was Your Man copyright from only one of that musical composition’s four co-authors,” Cyrus’s lawyers observed, with the observation that “partial interest” of the song only gives them “non-exclusive rights” to it, and under US copyright law, doesn't grant them the right to sue.
Bingo.
“[The] Plaintiff brings this copyright infringement action alone, without any of that musical composition’s co-authors or other owners,” Anderson’s counter continued. “Without the consent of the other owners, a grant of rights from just one co-owner does not confer standing.”
But TMI was quick to hit back:
“They’re seeking to make bogus technical arguments because they don’t have an actual substantive defence to the case,” said TMI’s lead counsel Alex Weingarten. “We’re not an assignee; we’re the owner of the copyright. The law is clear that we have the right to enforce our interest.”
This, he claimed, represented a “profound policy issue before the court”, and that “adopting the rule urged by [Cyrus] would turn the entire music industry, indeed the tech industry as well, on its ear.”
And, in the latest twist, it seems that the assigned District Judge Dean D. Pregerson reckons that TMI may have a point, and that Cyrus and team’s attempts to belittle their purchase (and ability to claim copyright) has proven baseless.
Commenting on the latest twist, Judge Pregerson said: “If someone wants to buy what someone owns, buy the entire thing, and that includes the right to enforce that ownership against the rest of the world. If you don’t allow that, then you diminish the value of what you’re selling to the point where it may become worthless.”
This is just the beginning of the case. IF TMI is successful in bringing the case then we’re all deep in the weeds as to whether Flowers does copy When I Was Your Man.
What do you reckon?
Anyone remember Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams/Blurred Lines Vs Marvin Gaye’s family/Got To Give It Up legal nightmare ? And with big names all around this case too, it's possible that Mars himself, his co-writers and more could get dragged in.
We’ll keep you posted.
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.
“Tell me who your source pots are that keep giving you info about Oasis”: The 'confirmed' 2025 reunion line-up is out there and Liam Gallagher wants to know how it got leaked
“It made me feel bad that I didn’t put it on the album”: From Pavement to Donna Summer, here are six more B-sides that became huge hits against the odds
