Katy Perry and her team of co-writers and producers on Dark Horse have lodged an appeal against the plagiarism verdict in July.
Perry and her team were found liable for $2.78 million (£2.21m) for copying elements of Dark Horse from a 2008 Christian rap song, Joyful Noise by Flame (Marcus Tyrone Gray).
In newly filed documents, Perry and her fellow defendants are asking the courts in California to overturn or allow a new trial based on “the legally unsupportable jury verdicts in this music copyright infringement case that are widely recognised within the music industry — and beyond — as a grave miscarriage of justice. …The erroneous verdicts in this case and the precedent established thereby present serious harm to music creators and to the music industry as a whole.”
The appeal is partly based on the limited commercial performance of Gray’s song: “Plaintiffs did not offer proof of one single digital or brick-and-mortar sale of Joyful Noise or (the album) Our World Redeemed and admitted that they have no such evidence.”
Dark Horse was one of Perry’s biggest hits, selling more than 13 million copies worldwide. The music video has been watched more than 2.6 billion times, and was the first by a female artist to reach a billion views on both YouTube and Vevo.
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