A US federal judge has ruled that only a jury can decide whether the production duo Steely & Clevie created the “dembow” rhythm used across reggaeton.
Judge André Birotte Jr. issued the decision on Wednesday (July 1), keeping alive a copyright lawsuit that names Bad Bunny, Karol G and more than 150 other artists over nearly 2,000 tracks. You can read the order in full here.
The suit alleges that those tracks copied Steely & Clevie‘s 1989 song Fish Market, which the plaintiffs say is the copyrightable source of dembow, the boom-ch-boom-chick percussion heard across the genre.
Birotte found that both sides had built cases that directly conflict, meaning a jury is the only way to decide whether Fish Market is copyrightable.
In the first phase of the case, Cleveland “Clevie” Browne and the heirs of Wycliffe “Steely” Johnson asked the judge to declare Fish Market the original source of the rhythm.
The defendants include Pitbull, Drake, Daddy Yankee, Luis Fonsi and Justin Bieber.
They also include units of the three major music companies: Universal Music Group, Sony Music and Warner Music Group.
Lawyers for the defendants countered, per Billboard, that Steely & Clevie have no valid copyright claim because the sound “exists in countless prior works and musical genres,” including the habanera rhythm.
“The evidentiary record presents competing, facially credible expert opinions regarding what elements exist in the claimed works, how those elements function musically, whether they are commonplace or original, and whether they form a coherent and protectable selection and arrangement,” wrote Judge André Birotte Jr.
“Put simply, plaintiffs’ experts advance one account of the relevant musical features and their significance, while defendants’ experts offer a fundamentally different interpretation of those same features. These are classic disputes of fact, not law,” Birotte added.
“The evidentiary record presents competing, facially credible expert opinions regarding what elements exist in the claimed works, how those elements function musically, whether they are commonplace or original, and whether they form a coherent and protectable selection and arrangement.”
André Birotte Jr., US DIstrict judge
The case will now move to a second phase of discovery focused on infringement.
That stage will test whether the 150-plus defendants had access to Fish Market and copied it in songs including Despacito, Tití Me Preguntó and Dame Tu Cosita.
A jury trial could follow unless the parties reach a settlement.
Stephen Doniger, a lawyer for Steely & Clevie, told Billboard: “We are pleased that the court largely rejected the defendants’ arguments but disappointed that it did not grant our client’s affirmative summary judgment motion.”
“It is hard to imagine how any jury could find the Dem Bow Riddim to be anything other than an original and protectable work given the undisputed evidence that it is made up of seven discrete elements combined in a way that no one has found in any work predating our clients’ Fish Market.
“We are pleased that the court largely rejected the defendants’ arguments but disappointed that it did not grant our client’s affirmative summary judgment motion.”
Stephen Doniger, lawyer for Steely & Clevie (via Billboard)
“That said, we have little doubt that a jury will see through [the defendants’] arguments and we look forward to the next steps in this case,” Doniger said.
Lawyers for most of the defendants did not immediately respond to Billboard‘s request for comment.
Billboard reported that the case could put hundreds of millions of dollars in damages at stake.
Bad Bunny ranked as the No. 2 artist in the US by on-demand audio streams through the first quarter of 2026, according to Luminate data reported by MBW.
Luminate said the rapper’s Super Bowl halftime performance helped push Latin music to a weekly US high of 2.74 billion on-demand audio streams in February.
Luminate said Latin music accounted for 120.9 billion of the 1.4 trillion on-demand audio streams generated in the US in 2025.
In March 2026, a US federal judge dismissed a separate copyright lawsuit against Bad Bunny over his track Enséñame a Bailar.
Duke University law professor Jennifer Jenkins told Billboard in 2023 that a win for Steely & Clevie “would confer a monopoly over an entire genre, something unprecedented in music copyright litigation.”Music Business Worldwide
