Jurors Award $2.78 Mil In ‘Dark Horse’ Case
• Jurors on Thursday ruled that Katy Perry, her collaborators and her record label owe the writers of a Christian rap song $2.78 million for improperly borrowing elements of the 2009 song “Joyful Noise” for Perry’s 2014 hit “Dark Horse.”
After days of testimony in federal court in Los Angeles, USA Today reports the jurors in the copyright case decided Christian rapper Marcus Gray should get just over $550,000 from Perry, with Capitol Records responsible for the majority of the $2.78 million. The same jury of nine unanimously found Monday that certain beats in “Dark Horse” were improperly copied from “Joyful Noise,” co-written and performed by lead plaintiff Gray, who went by the stage name Flame at the time.
“Dark Horse,” a hybrid of pop, trap and hip-hop sounds that was the third single from Perry’s 2013 album Prism, spent four weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 in early 2014. The song earned Perry a Grammy Award nomination and was also part of her 2015 Super Bowl halftime performance.
After the first phase of the trial to determine whether copyright law was violated, the second phase shifted to the penalty question – determining how much the Perry song had earned and how much to award to Gray and his collaborators. Not surprisingly, the two sides came up with wildly different numbers — lawyers for Gray and his two co-writers told the jury they should get nearly $20 million, while the defense argued for about $360,000.
However, as The Hollywood Reporter notes, “Still pending is a motion from Perry’s lawyers asking U.S. District Judge Christina Snyder to rule that no reasonable jury could find copyright infringement based on the evidence presented at trial. If Snyder sides with the singer, this damages award would be moot.”
