A federal judge has thrown out the majority of copyright infringement claims against Kanye West in a 2024 lawsuit over tracks from his 2021 album Donda — but the rapper isn’t fully in the clear yet.
The lawsuit was brought by Artist Revenue Advocates (ARA), a Delaware LLC whose investors include Actio Capital. ARA’s members include four musicians: Khalil Abdul Rahman, Sam Barsh, Dan Seeff, and Josh Mease, who allege that West’s songs Hurricane and Moon infringed their 2018 composition and sound recording known as MSD PT2.
On February 26, Judge Michelle Williams Court of the US District Court for the Central District of California issued a mixed ruling, granting summary judgment on most claims while allowing a narrower set of allegations to proceed toward an April 20 trial. A mediation held on February 20 was unsuccessful.
You can read the new filing in full here. The lawsuit was originally filed in July 2024. You can read the suit in full here.
According to new court documents, Rahman sent a Dropbox folder containing MSD PT2 to a producer called Nascent in March 2018. Six months later, Nascent texted Rahman a link to West’s Instagram post of 80 Degrees — an early demo of Hurricane that used MSD PT2. Rahman responded positively, and several of the artists shared the post on social media.
The artists went on to receive formal credits as composers on Hurricane, and Rahman received credits as a producer on both Hurricane and Moon. The group also received Grammy nominations related to Donda and some royalties.
The problems for ARA began with the question of who actually owns what. The court found that ARA never obtained a valid written transfer of the MSD PT2 musical composition copyright. Under federal copyright law, oral agreements don’t suffice.
The court cited statute requiring that a transfer of copyright ownership “is not valid unless an instrument of conveyance, or a note or memorandum of transfer, is in writing and signed by the owner of the rights conveyed.” That ruling eliminated all composition-based infringement claims in one stroke.
On the sound recording side, ARA’s own musicology expert, Dr. Joe Bennett of Berklee College of Music, confirmed that the album version of Hurricane “does not appear to contain a sample of the Sound Recording” of MSD PT2. Sample-detection testing returned a null result, and Bennett also determined that Moon did not audiosample MSD PT2. The court granted summary judgment on those claims too.
What survives is a narrower but potentially significant claim: that pre-release versions of Hurricane — including the original 80 Degrees demo and listening party performances — did incorporate MSD PT2‘s actual sound recording.
Bennett concluded that the recording “was used in all versions of [80 Degrees] I have analyzed, and at Listening Party 1″ — a reference to the series of high-profile public playback events West held in the summer of 2021, where early and often significantly different versions of Donda tracks were performed before the album’s official release. ARA argues that these versions were commercially exploited through deals with Apple and others.
The court also rejected West’s implied license defense, finding disputed facts — including whether the artists’ attorney objected to the use — that prevent resolution before trial.
Notably, the judge issued a stern warning to West’s legal team at Martorell Law APC for repeated failures to follow the court’s procedural rules, stating that if any member of the firm fails to comply in future, “the Court will not only strike Martorell Law APC’s filing, but consider imposing other sanctions against the firm.”
This case wasn’t the only recent copyright headache for West.
As MBW reported in 2022, Kanye West was also hit with a lawsuit for the alleged copyright infringement of a sample used in the track Flowers on his Donda 2 album. The legal action was filed in June of that year by Ultra International Music Publishing, citing its client, Chicago House music pioneer Marshall Jefferson.Music Business Worldwide
