Boyd v. Webster

District court denies motion to dismiss singer-songwriter’s copyright infringement suit accusing rapper Travis Scott and others of using her demo to create 2023 hit “Telekinesis,” rejecting defendants’ argument that plaintiff knowingly misrepresented facts in her copyright registration application.

Singer-songwriter Victory Boyd is a lyricist and owner of the music publishing company The Songs of Glory. In 2019, Ye (the rapper formerly known as Kanye West) sent Boyd chords and melodies he liked and asked Boyd to write music for him. Boyd did so, creating a demo that she sent to Ye as a voice note. Ye allegedly shared the demo with Jacques Bermon Webster II, professionally known as rapper Travis Scott.

In May 2023, Scott and his collaborators SZA and Future allegedly used the demo to create a song titled “Telekinesis,” crediting Boyd as a co-writer. Later that year, watch company Audemars Piguet asked Boyd for permission to use the song in an upcoming advertising campaign. Although Boyd objected to the song’s use in the campaign, defendants granted Audemars Piguet permission. Boyd then registered the demo with the U.S. Copyright Office as a “Sound Recording and Musical Work (with or without lyrics),” listing herself as the sole author, and a publication date of Dec. 12, 2023. Boyd and her music publishing company sued Scott, his collaborators, Epic Records, Sony Music Entertainment and others involved in producing the song, asserting claims of copyright infringement and seeking an equitable accounting of revenue under state law. Shortly before Boyd filed a second amended complaint, she registered the demo’s lyrics with the Copyright Office, identifying herself as the sole author.

Scott, his collaborators and several other defendants moved to dismiss Boyd’s claims for failure to state a claim under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). Defendants argued that Boyd’s copyright registrations were invalid and therefore Boyd was barred from asserting claims for infringement of the demo. Specifically, defendants alleged: (1) Boyd identified herself as sole author of the demo in the first registration, when she should have identified Ye as a co-author; (2) Boyd wrongly identified the work as published in the first registration; and (3) the second registration encompassed only the lyrics, but lyrics are not separately copyrightable when they are included in a song with music.

The district court disagreed. While it noted that 18 U.S.C. § 411(a) requires a plaintiff to have a valid copyright before filing suit for infringement, the court explained that it could not determine that either the first or second registration was invalid based solely on the pleadings. In order to do so, the district court would need to find that Boyd had knowingly submitted inaccurate information to the Copyright Office and that the inaccurate information was material. Given that no such facts were apparent from the pleadings, the district court could not make such a determination.

Further, the district court explained, defendants’ argument faced even more fundamental deficiencies. First, as to the issue of authorship, the district court concluded it had no basis to find that Boyd’s claim of sole authorship was inaccurate. Defendants merely point out that Boyd alleged Ye sent her chords and melodies he liked and asked her to write music for him. But in order for there to be joint authorship of a work, there must be evidence that the co-author’s contribution to the work was independently copyrightable and that the co-author intended their contribution to be joined in an inseparable whole. The mere fact that Ye was alleged to have provided Boyd with chords and melodies satisfied neither of those requirements.

Second, as to the issue of publication, the defendants argued the first registration was invalid because its designation of a published work was inconsistent with the second registration’s unpublished designation. The district court disagreed, holding that there was no authority that wrongly identifying an unpublished work as published, or misstating the date of publication, constituted an error requiring invalidation.

Third, defendants asserted that the second registration was invalid because it was solely for the lyrics, yet “lyrics cannot be registered separately from a song’s music if the music and lyrics form part of a single unitary work.” But for the same reason that the district court could not find at the pleadings stage that Ye was a co-author of the demo, the district court held it could not find that the lyrics were part of a joint work. Therefore, the district court denied defendants’ motion to dismiss Boyd’s copyright claims. It did, however, dismiss all copyright claims asserted on behalf of Boyd’s music publishing company, since that company was not identified as an author on the registrations and Boyd did not allege that the company was an author or owner of the copyright in her demo.

The defendants next argued that Boyd’s request for statutory damages, fees and costs should be dismissed because their song was created prior to the effective registration date of Boyd’s demo, and copyright law bars claims for statutory damages and attorneys’ fees prior to the effective date of registration. The court acknowledged that even though the song was released in July 2023, Boyd’s effective registration date was not until Dec. 12, 2023. It therefore held that Boyd was not entitled to seek statutory damages or attorneys’ fees for any infringements that occurred prior to the effective date of registration. But the court explained that it had the discretion to award costs for all alleged infringement, regardless of its timing relative to registration.

Finally, defendants argued that Boyd’s state law claim for an equitable accounting of revenue from the alleged infringement was preempted under the Copyright Act. The district court agreed, noting that the claim, at its core, sought damages for misappropriation of the demo. Boyd argued that she did not seek a common-law accounting but instead sought an accounting pursuant to 17 U.S.C. § 504(b), which allows a plaintiff to seek disgorgement of profits from the infringer. But the court ruled that the Copyright Act does not provide for an independent claim for an accounting, though if a plaintiff eventually succeeded in proving liability for infringement, the court would assess disgorgement of profits under Section 504(b) of the Copyright Act. That section establishes a “dual-burden” framework, under which plaintiff must prove defendant’s gross revenue attributable to the infringement, while defendant must prove deductible expenses and any element of profit not related to the infringement. Therefore, the district court dismissed the accounting claim in its entirety.

Summary prepared by Tal Dickstein and Edward Delman