Beyoncé wins $7M Copyright Infringement Trial

Singer Beyoncé wins a million dollar court case just days after her husband’s court victory. She won in a $7.1 million lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court by singer Ahmad Javon Lane, a judge ruled. Lane sued Beyoncé Knowles Carter last year claiming her song “X.O.” ripped off an original composition titled “XOXO” that he shared with one of her backup dancers in 2013. The judge compared the titles, introductions, arrangements and lyrics of the two sounds and found no “substantial similarity,” he wrote. “To be sure, both songs are directed toward a romantic interest. But beyond that, they diverge. XOXO’s lyrics are explicitly sexual, while XO’s are substantially more tame and metaphorical,” the judge wrote. “The singer in XOXO leaves little to the imagination, describing himself as ‘horny” and singing that his love interest’s ‘body is the promise,'” the judge argued. “In XO, by contrast, the lyrics combine light and dark imagery,” and are much more “subtle,” the judge said. “An appreciative fan would term Lane’s track seductive and personal, and Beyoncé’s track joyous and uplifting,” he concluded.