After years of feuding, Drake and Chris Brown finally settled their feud and commemorated the occasion with “No Guidance.” The single appeared on Breezy’s Indigo album and dominated the summer of 2019. Unfortunately, the single’s success has led to a lawsuit against both artists who are being accused of ripping off Braindon Cooper’s 2016 single, “I Love Your Dress.”
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Last month, Cooper claimed that it was “both egotistical and without any legal basis whatsoever” to claim that Breezy and Drizzy didn’t have “plausible” to his single. However, attorneys for both artists are demanding a dismissal, describing Cooper’s record as an “obscure song” that contains a common phrase like “You got it.” The attorneys for the multi-platinum-selling artists claimed that he can’t “exercise a monopoly” over the phrase.
“This is not a close call,” Brown’s lawyer James G. Sammataro’s wrote in a filing for the case, claiming that posting a song on the Internet — one of 82 million on Spotify — and performing said song live does “not constitute widespread dissemination as a matter of law.”
Sammataro dives deeper into the allegations that Cooper sent his song to an A&R who allegedly has ties to Birdman named Mic Tee, who previously worked under the AMAG Collective. Sammataro shut down allegations that Drake and Breezy heard the song through Mic Tee as “conjectural and speculative.” Sammataro also went into dismantle arguments that Tee told Cooper to travel to Drake’s hometown of Toronto that the plaintiff suggested played some sort of role in the copyright infringement.
“Plaintiffs’ allegation that Mic Tee suggested that Cooper travel to Toronto, Drake’s ‘original hometown,’ is insufficient to permit an inference of access. By plaintiffs’ own account, Drake has resided in California since 2014. In any event, there is no allegation that Cooper went to Toronto, and it is implausible to assume that every musician in Toronto collaborates and shares music with Drake,” the filing reads.
We’ll keep you posted on more updates regarding the case.