Katy Perry's Dark Horse 'copied another song'
- Published
A jury in the US has said that Katy Perry copied the beat of another song to make her hit single Dark Horse.
Nine people on the panel agreed that there were too many similarities between the beat of her 2013 hit and a Christian rap song called Joyful Noise by Marcus Gray - and that she had infringed on the rap song's copyright.
The issue was being disputed in the court for a week, after first being raised by Gray's legal team back in 2014.
Katy Perry told the jury that her song was original and that she had never heard of the rap song. Her team said that the beat in both songs was "commonplace" and therefore it could not be copyrighted.
"They're trying to own basic building blocks of music, the alphabet of music that should be available to everyone," said Katy's lawyer Christine Lepera.
But Gray's lawyers disagreed and said that Perry's track had "copied an important part" of his song, which the jury agreed with.
Today, the court will decide how much money Gray might be owed as a result of this.
Dark Horse was released in 2013 on Katy's fourth album Prism, and is one of her biggest hits, selling more than 13 million copies worldwide.
Copyright is the legal right that you get when you make something creative. For example, if you create a piece of music, you will own the copyright for that music.
Owning the copyright of something (e.g. a song, photograph or drawing) gives the owner the right by law to control how that piece of work is used.
So copyright law allows you to stop other people copying work that you have created.
Copyright infringement is using someone else's work without their permission to do so. If a court decides you have done this, you might have to pay money to the original owner of the work.
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