A federal appeals court has rejected a lawsuit that accused French Montana of illegally sampling on his hit “Ain’t Worried About Nothin’” – even though the beats of the two tracks sound “indistinguishable” to the “naked ear.”
Eddie Lee Richardson (aka Hotwire The Producer) had claimed that French’s 2013 hit ripped off his instrumental song “Hood Pushin’ Weight.” But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled Thursday that Richardson had technically failed to prove his case.
“We agree with Richardson that HPW’s beat, to the naked ear, seems indistinguishable from the beat in AWAN,” Judge Candace Jackson-Akiwumi wrote for a three-judge panel. “Yet, opinions and allegations unsupported by facts are not enough.”
The appeals court’s ruling upheld an earlier decision by a lower judge, who noted the same clear similarities between the songs – but also the same legal shortcomings: “If it is any consolation, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” that judge wrote last year.
Richardson sued French in 2019, claiming the star and others stole core elements from “Hood Pushin’ Weight” – an instrumental track Richardson published in 2012 on the platform SoundClick – when they wrote “Ain’t Worried About Nothin’,” which reached No. 14 on Billboard’s Hot Rap Songs chart in August 2013.
But Richardson’s allegations had a fatal flaw: he had only secured a copyright registration for his song’s sound recording, not for the underlying musical composition. Under U.S. copyright law, such recordings are only infringed if they are directly copied, or sampled, in a new track – and not when a new artist merely imitates their musical elements in a new record.
Last year, Judge Nancy L. Maldonado dismissed Richardson’s case on those grounds, saying he had failed to show such direct sampling of his sound recording. In doing so, she included an unusual sympathetic note at the end of the ruling, stressing that it was merely a “technical win” for French — and one that he “should not claim as a substantive victory.”
“The court hopes that Richardson will not be deterred in his musical endeavors, now armed with a better understanding of copyright law,” the judge wrote at the time.
Thursday’s decision upheld that earlier ruling, saying that the owner of a sound recording must show that an alleged infringer “actually copied the specific digital sound elements in the work at issue.” The appellate court said Richardson “failed to supply facts” to support such an argument.
“Richardson could have presented either direct or indirect evidence to succeed in his claim that Kharbouch duplicated HPW in producing AWAN,” Judge Jackson-Akiwumi wrote, specifically noting that he had failed to depose French. “Richardson has presented neither.”
But the ruling echoed the earlier judge’s sympathetic tone. Refusing to force Richardson to repay French’s legal bills – typical in losing copyright cases — the judge said the accuser had “genuinely believed” that the star had copied his beat, and had simply “failed to appreciate the technical differences between a sound recording and music composition copyright.”
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