Two artists from Virginia, who filed a copyright lawsuit against Justin Bieber and Usher over the song "Somebody to Love" in 2013, have lost after the judge dismissed their case.
U.S. District Judge Arenda Wright Allen in Norfolk, Virginia adopted a federal magistrate's judge discovery and ruled that cousins Devin Copeland and Mareio Overton were unable to prove before the court Bieber and Usher had taken their song, which they released in 2008. Bieber released "Somebody to Love" in 2010.
Copeland and Overton filed the $10 million lawsuit, claiming that the song released by the 22-year-old Canadian singer has some similarities to the said copyrighted track, according to Wavy. However, the judge dismissed their case with prejudice, meaning that it could not be revived in court again.
The following day, Copeland and Overton's lawyer Duncan Byers did not provide any immediate comments about the dismissal of the case. The plaintiffs have since claimed in a court filing last month that they had resolved their disputes with Bieber, as well as with Def Jam Recordings and Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group.
This marks the second time that Allen had dismissed the lawsuit back in 2014. However, it was brought up again in June 2015 by a federal appeals court, saying a jury discovered that the choruses of the two songs were "intrinsically similar," according to Reuters.
Bieber and Usher had claimed that "Somebody to Love" was taken from a version released in November 2009 by songwriter Heather Bright and production trio The Stereotypes. But the plaintiffs claimed that the singers had access to the track on an earlier date.
In the same appeal, Copeland and Overton argued that Allen should have permitted a jury to determine whether or not both songs carried any similarities as opposed to dismissing the cased based solely on the judge's opinion. However, Allen declared that the cousins' objections were without merit, according to Rolling Stone.
