{"id":834463,"date":"2026-09-02T19:24:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T19:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/834463\/"},"modified":"2026-09-02T19:24:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T19:24:09","slug":"bad-bunny-wins-ruling-in-lawsuit-targeting-nearly-2000-reggaeton-songs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/834463\/","title":{"rendered":"Bad Bunny Wins Ruling in Lawsuit Targeting Nearly 2,000 Reggaeton Songs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bad Bunny<\/a> and dozens of other artists have scored a major victory in a copyright lawsuit targeting nearly 2,000 songs, after a federal judge reversed an earlier decision and rejected claims of ownership over the dembow rhythm, the boom-ch-boom-chick beat at the heart of reggaeton.<\/p>\n

In a ruling reported by Billboard<\/a>, Judge Andr\u00e9 Birotte Jr. found that Jamaican producer Cleveland \u201cClevie\u201d Browne and the heirs of Wycliffe \u201cSteely\u201d Johnson failed to establish copyright control over the rhythm. Their 2021 lawsuit targets more than 150 artists, including Karol G, Daddy Yankee, J Balvin, Drake, and Luis Fonsi.<\/p>\n

The decision marks a reversal from July, when Birotte ruled that a jury should determine whether the musical arrangement was protected by copyright. Bad Bunny\u2019s attorneys subsequently asked him to reconsider, arguing that the plaintiffs were asserting a \u201cFrankenstein\u201d copyright<\/a> assembled from elements of three separate songs.<\/p>\n

Birotte agreed, finding that the allegedly protected arrangement does not exist in any single copyrighted work.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou cannot copyright a rhythm by reverse-engineering it from three different songs once you\u2019re already in court,\u201d Bad Bunny attorney Kenneth Freundlich told Billboard\u00a0on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

The ruling eliminates a large portion of the lawsuit, though narrower claims involving alleged direct sampling of Steely & Clevie recordings remain.<\/p>\n

Related Video<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bad Bunny and dozens of other artists have scored a major victory in a copyright lawsuit targeting nearly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":834464,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[236,88],"class_list":["post-834463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=834463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834463\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/834464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=834463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=834463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=834463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}