Last week in the Central District of California, Elton Newman, Tyrone Cosey and D’Artanian Stovall filed a complaint against DistroKid LLC, Spotify USA Inc., Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Aspiro AB, Pandora Media, LLC, Google LLC, SoundHound, Inc., and other unnamed parties for their purported infringement of the plaintiffs’ copyrighted musical composition, “Get The Gat.”
According to the complaint, the plaintiffs are the authors of the music and lyrics to the composition and they own the rights and title to the registered copyrighted composition. The composition was created and released in 1992, however, the plaintiffs averred that in 2016 “a person or entity known as ‘Legendary DJs” illegally released and distributed the Composition on an album entitled ‘Old School New Orleans Bounce Vol. 2’ without the Plaintiffs’ knowledge.” The plaintiffs said that they believe the Legendary DJs “gave the Composition to DistroKid (a music distributor) to distribute to various music platforms including but not limited to all Defendants herein.”
The plaintiffs reiterated in the complaint that the defendants did not have any authorization, permission, or consent to use the composition and were infringing its copyright. The plaintiffs stated that in January 2020, after discovering the alleged infringement, they told the defendants to take down the infringing composition from their platform. Although all of the defendants removed the infringing composition, the plaintiffs alleged that they have not been compensated monetarily for the purported illegal use of the composition between 2016 and 2020.
In sum, the defendants are accused of willful, intentional, and purposeful copyright infringement in violation of the Copyright Act. Moreover, the plaintiffs contended that the defendants, including Legendary DJs are not the legitimate copyright owners of this musical composition. Consequently, the plaintiffs asserted that the aforementioned conduct has caused them harm.
The plaintiffs have sought an accounting for profits, damages and other amounts attributable to the purported infringement, pre-judgment interest, and injunctive and declaratory relief.
The plaintiffs are represented by Boddie & Associates, P.C.
