The Latest Copyright Lawsuit Has An Interesting Twist

The latest copyright lawsuit in the music world brings an interesting twist we haven't seen before. Music rights acquiring company Tempo Music is suing Miley Cyrus and her fellow cowriters, saying Cyrus and other parties copied a work they have partial ownership of. 

But in a first, the plaintiffs also listed music streaming companies, major retailers, and entertainment brands as defendants. To make it even more bizarre, there was one notable absence on the list. 

The Songs In Question For The Latest Copyright Lawsuit

The two songs at the heart of the copyright lawsuit are Miley Cyrus' massive 2023 hit "Flowers" and Bruno Mars' 2012 tune "When I Was Your Man." The former song broke records at radio, achieving the most cumulative weeks at No. 1 on airplay (106) and also earning records as the most-streamed, most-downloaded, and most-played song in the first half of 2023. 

Mars' hit ballad also saw commercial and critical success, hitting No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and receiving a GRAMMY nomination for Best Pop Solo Performance at the 56th Annual Grammy Awards. 

When Cyrus released "Flowers," listeners almost immediately picked up on the references to "When I Was Your Man," both lyrically and melodically. The chorus is more or less a lyrical interpolation of "When I Was Your Man," essentially taking the lines from Mars' song and turning them around; whereas Mars sings, "I should've bought you flowers," Cyrus quips, "I can buy myself flowers," etc. 

And it's probably not much of a coincidence. Listeners also noted that the song seemed to be a breakup song aimed at Cyrus' former significant other who reportedly routinely dedicated Mars' song to Cyrus throughout their relationship. 

So Who Is Suing Whom, Exactly? 

Here's where this particular copyright lawsuit starts to veer from other recent high-profile cases like Ed Sheeran and the estate of Marvin Gaye or Katy Perry and Marcus Gray et al. The plaintiff in the case is Tempo Music, a company that acquired the publishing rights to Philip Lawrence's catalog. Lawrence is a longtime collaborator of Mars', as well as a songwriter on "When I Was Your Man." Tempo Music bought Lawrence's rights in 2021, about nine years after the song came out. 

Beyond "When I Was Your Man," Lawrence is a major songwriter, producer, and voice actor whose work with Mars and others has landed him eight GRAMMY awards and a plethora of other nominations. But neither he, nor Mars, nor anybody else directly associated with the creation of "When I Was Your Man" are listed as plaintiffs in the copyright lawsuit. Tempo Music Investments, LLC is the sole plaintiff. 

The defendants, on the other hand...

Tempo Music lists nearly 30 different defendants in the lawsuit, including Miley Cyrus and the other songwriters on "Flowers," as well as their publishing companies. Those are pretty standard defendants in cases like these. But this is where it gets interesting.

Tempo Music is also suing several high-profile music streaming services, including Apple Music, Amazon Music, Deezer, and Pandora. They're suing major retailers like Walmart, Target, and Barns & Noble. And they're also suing companies like I Heart Media, Live Nation Entertainment, and even Disney, alleging they all took part in distributing some form of the song. For instance, the complaint says Disney released a documentary concert series featuring the song. 

The one notable exception to the lengthy list of defendants? Spotify. The leader in music streaming is nowhere in the copyright lawsuit, despite the platform being responsible for more than 2.2 billion streams of "Flowers" (currently her top song on Spotify as of publishing time). Your guess is as good as ours as to why Tempo Music didn't include the company in the complaint. 

But this number and breadth of defendants in a music copyright case, especially ones seemingly so far removed from the actual creation of the song, is certainly unusual.

So What's Going To Happen? 

If past copyright lawsuits involving hit songs have taught us anything, it's that neither the courts nor the attorneys really know what's going to happen. We've seen contradictory rulings from multiple angles. For instance, in the Katy Perry lawsuit, a jury initially agreed with the plaintiffs that Perry had copied their song — but a judge later overturned that ruling. At the time, the case seemed to be one of the more tenuous copyright lawsuits, and the initial jury verdict sent chills down the spines of songwriters and rights holders everywhere. 

The estate of Marvin Gaye twice appeared in court in the past decade, ending on either side of the decision once. In the first case, the estate was awarded $5 million from Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke. In the second, Ed Sheeran successfully defended his song "Thinking Out Loud," winning a jury verdict in May 2023 (around the same time "Flowers" was reaching its peak, interestingly enough). 

Other times, many of these cases will get settled before they ever actually go to court. Typically, artists will add the other writers in question to the song and pay out an agreed sum of money that ostensibly represents how much money those writers and rights holders would've received had they been listed as a writer from the start. We saw this happen with Olivia Rodrigo adding writers from the band Paramore as well as Taylor Swift to two of her songs.

Obviously, nobody has a crystal ball, but given the pretty undeniable similarities between "Flowers" and "When I Was Your Man," as well as Cyrus' alleged personal connection to the latter, it's interesting Cyrus and company didn't just add Lawrence and other writers from "When I Was Your Man" to the "Flowers" from the start.

That said, including cherry-picked streaming companies and a handful of other companies that may have played some part in "distributing" the song could set a complicated precedent. 

Seeing as the majority of these cases settle out of court, that's where the safe money is in this particular copyright lawsuit, too. But hey, stranger things have happened. Any one of the nearly 30 defendants could want to take this thing all the way. 

It's not like any of these massive companies are notorious for having super aggressive legal teams, or anything...