Katy Perry appeals plagiarism ruling in Christian rap song case
Pop star and the song's co-creators call the ruling a 'grave miscarriage of justice'
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Your support makes all the difference.Katy Perry is appealing against a recent ruling that her hit song "Dark Horse" plagiarised a Christian rap single released in 2009.
Variety reports that the appeal, which also cites Lukasz "Dr Luke" Gottwald, Capitol Records and others, asks the court to overturn the ruling or grant a new trial.
It cites insufficient evidence for the jury's decision that the works share substantial similarities, that Perry and the song's co-creators were aware of rapper Flame's song "Joyful Noise", and that the beat used in his song is protected by copyright.
Perry and her collaborators also argue that Flame, real name Marcus Gray, was not famous enough for them to have heard the song before composing "Dark Horse".
"No reasonable fact-finder could have concluded that 'Joyful Noise' was so well-known that it could be reasonably inferred that [the defendants] had heard it, particularly in this digital age of content overload, with billions of videos and songs available to users with trillions of streams," the appeal read.
The brief calls the verdict "legally unsupportable" and "a grave miscarriage of justice".
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