Facts

Trena Steward, Lorenzo Pryor, and Karla Ray filed a copyright infringement action against Kanye West, UMG Recordings, Inc., Roc-A-Fella Records, LLC, The Island Def Jam Music Group, Caroline Distribution, Electronic Arts, Inc., Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., Stones Throw Records, NBCUniversal Media, LLC, Konami Digital Entertainment, Inc., Terminal Realty, Inc., Autumn Games, LLC, and Bad Boy Records LLC. Plaintiffs are the heirs of musician David Pryor from the music group "Thunder & Lightning." In 1974, Pryor wrote, recorded and composed "Bumpin' Bus Stop," which was federally registered by Private Stock Record's music publisher. On Jan. 7, 2004, Pryor was admitted to a nursing facility where he suffered cerebrovascular disease, prostate cancer, Parkinson's disease, dementia, diabetes and epilepsy. He died on May 14, 2006, and his rights to the song were assigned to plaintiffs.

PLAINTIFF'S CONTENTIONS:
PPlaintiffs alleged that Private Stock's copyright application mistakenly failed to say that the "Bumpin' Bus Stop" recording was a previously recorded vocal performance at the Gold Future recording studio and named the wrong author. They claimed they recently registered the Gold Future recording for copyright purposes. Next, they claimed that defendant engaged in a copyright infringement scheme by sampling plaintiffs' music on a massive scale. They alleged that on Aug. 30, 2005, defendants recorded a song by Kanye West entitled "Gold Digger," which incorporated copyrighted elements of plaintiff's song. In addition, defendants sampled plaintiffs' song on several other sound recordings in songs by artists Beanie Siegl, Crag Mack, Q-Tip, Tupac Shakur, Gang Starr, Brian McKnight, Dr. Octagon and Josh Davis. In particular, plaintiffs alleged claims for copyright infringement, contributory infringement, and violation of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.

DEFENDANT'S CONTENTIONS:
Defendants argued that plaintiffs failed to allege which defendants allegedly copied plaintiffs' song or recording, and how that allegedly occurred in each of the allegedly infringing works. In addition, plaintiffs failed to state proper claims for relief for contributory infringement or under RICO.

Result

The district court granted defendants' motion for judgment on the pleadings and denied plaintiffs' cross-motion. The court concluded that plaintiffs failed to state a claim for copyright infringement because defendants' use of plaintiffs' sound recording was de minimis. Also, plaintiffs failed to state a claim for declaratory relief, and contributory infringement could not be found in the absence of direct infringement by a third party.

Other Information

FILING DATE: April 5, 2013.