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Jessie J song theft lawsuit dismissed again
By Chris Cooke | Published on Monday 5 September 2016
A song theft lawsuit launched against Jessie J and her songwriting pals in relation to her 2012 chart-topper ‘Domino’ has been dismissed for a second time.
As previously reported, Californian singer Will Loomis alleged that J’s hit lifted some of its melody from his 2008 song ‘Bright Red Chords’. Legal reps for J and her label successfully secured a summary judgement in their favour in 2013, but Loomis took the matter to appeal. Then last week the Ninth Circuit court of appeal concurred with the original judgement on the matter.
Neither court got to the issue of whether or not the two songs were sufficiently similar to constitute copyright infringement, because they decided that Loomis had failed to prove that any of the songwriters involved in ‘Domino’ had ever heard his earlier song, which – despite a little interest from MTV – wasn’t widely played or commercially successful.
Loomis noted that his former guitarist Casey Hooper had later worked with Katy Perry, who in turn had worked with producer Dr Luke, who was part of the team behind ‘Domino’. But the court said, according to The Hollywood Reporter, that: “Nothing in the record shows the requisite nexus between Hooper and the ‘Domino’ songwriters except for Loomis’s own speculation”.
