British pop star Dua Lipa and her music label, Warner Records, have convinced a Los Angeles federal court to dismiss the copyright lawsuit filed against Lipa by Florida reggae group Artikal Sound System on Monday.
The group had accused Lipa of copying their 2017 song, Live Your Life, for her 2020 hit, Levitating.
While songwriters Sandy Linzer and L. Russell Brown, who have also sued Lipa and her label for infringing their copyrights, claimed she and her co-songwriters copied the signature melody of their 1979 song, Wiggle and Giggle All Night, recorded by Cory Daye.
Lipa had previously stated that she had never heard the two disco tracks named in the lawsuit against her.
Members of Artikal Sound System claimed that Lipa copied their song, which reached number two on Billboard’s reggae chart the year of its release.
“Artikal Sound System failed to argue that the writers of Levitating ever had access to the group’s 2017 song,” said US District Judge Sunshine Sykes, dismissing the lawsuit and giving the group an opportunity to file a new complaint.
Sykes rejected the band’s request to move its case to New York to be heard with the Wiggle and Giggle All Night writers’ infringement lawsuit.
The Wiggle and Giggle All Night songwriters have cited a TikTok video that noted the similarities between their songs and Levitating in their complaint.
The writers also said that Lipa and her co-writers have turned to disco songs like theirs for inspiration while making her album Future Nostalgia.
Levitating spent 77 weeks on Billboard’s Hot 100 US singles chart, peaking at No. 2 in 2021.
