Now Reading: Travis Scott, SZA, and Future Battle ‘Telekinesis’ Copyright Lawsuit
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Travis Scott, SZA, and Future Battle ‘Telekinesis’ Copyright Lawsuit
Photo Credit: SZA by Raph_PH / CC by 4.0
The copyright claim against Travis Scott, SZA, and Future over their 2023 track “Telekinesis” will move forward after a judge refused to toss the case. The claims have been substantially trimmed, however.
The copyright infringement lawsuit filed by Roc Nation singer-songwriter Victory Boyd and her publishing company against Travis Scott, SZA, Future, Sony Music Entertainment, and other labels and publishers, will move forward. Filed back in January, the suit alleged that Scott and his collaborators copied her song “Like the Way It Sounds” to create their 2023 hit “Telekinesis.” Now, the court has ruled not to toss the case, though a judge did throw out several elements of the initial complaint.
The latest development, filed on Monday, March 9, shows that U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil trimmed some of the fat from the case, but left the core copyright complaint intact.
Boyd’s demand for an accounting of revenue from the alleged infringement was dismissed on the grounds that such a claim is preempted by the Copyright Act, which has its own framework for determining revenue. The claims brought by Boyd’s publishing company, The Songs of Glory, were similarly tossed, as the company does not appear on either of the copyright registrations related to Boyd’s track.
Further, Judge Vyskocil found that because Boyd’s first copyright registration didn’t take effect until December 2023, when “Telekinesis” came out that July, statutory damages and attorney fees will not be available for claims based on infringement that began before that date.
The defendants had argued that Boyd’s copyright registrations were not valid since she knowingly omitted crucial information about the work’s authorship, namely that Kanye West should have been listed as a co-author.
But the judge also noted that the defendants’ argument came “nowhere near” to shouldering their burden of proof that the registrations were invalid. Judge Vyskocil wrote that they were effectively asking the court to “make a cascading series of determinations at the pleadings stage that could implicate the rights of various parties […] in ways that are rather difficult to predict.”
Lastly, the court declined to rely on the defendants’ references to Kanye’s “chords and melodies” to counter Boyd’s claims, as it could not determine at this stage whether those contributions were copyrightable independently.
Importantly, Boyd was credited as a co-writer in the metadata of “Telekinesis” provided to DSPs. But her lawsuit claims she was not aware the track had been commercially released and therefore prevented her from finishing her original work—at the time, a demo she collaborated on with West—and releasing it through Roc Nation.
