A Los Angeles jury on Monday found that the song "Dark Horse" by Katy Perry had been copied from a Christian rap tune by Flame called "Joyful Noise."
Flame is the stage name for Marcus Gray, who recorded "Joyful Noise" in 2009, according to this Associated Press report in the Los Angeles Times. Gray and two co-authors filed the lawsuit in 2014, and the nine-member jury panel reached their decision on Monday.
The jury will now go into the penalty phase, in which they will decide how much money Perry owes the plaintiffs for copyright infringement.
"Dark Horse" was a wildly-popular hit by Perry that was released on her 2013 album "Prism," and it spent four weeks at the top spot on the Billboard Top 100 in 2014 and earned the pop star a Grammy nomination.
The attorney for Gray said the beat and instrumentals for half of "Dark Horse" mirror those of "Joyful Noise." Meanwhile, Christine Lepera, the attorney who represents Perry, said the music contained basic music elements and would cause a ripple effect through the music industry.
"They're trying to own basic building blocks of music, the alphabet of music that should be available to everyone," Lepera said.
Perry and fellow songwriters for "Dark Horse" claimed they had never heard of "Joyful Noise" before writing their own song.
Gray's attorneys said "Joyful Noise" was widely distributed, and that there was a good chance Perry or any of her co-authors could have heard the song. Gray's attorney, Michael A. Kahn, said during closing comments that Perry started her career as a Christian musician, and that mainstream music was trying to push Christian music to the side.
"They're trying to shove Mr. Gray into some gospel music alleyway that no one ever visits," Kahn said.
"Joyful Noise" has more than 2 million views each on two separate YouTube videos. Here is one of those.
Here is the official YouTube video of "Dark Horse," which has more than 2.6 billion views.
The report states that when Perry testified on the second day of the seven-day trial, there was a technical glitch while attorneys tried to play "Dark Horse" in the courtroom.
"I could perform it live," said Perry, 34, who's also an "American Idol" judge.
Though she did not perform her song live at the trial, there was a full playing of each song during closing arguments. Perry was not at the courtroom for the jury's verdict on Monday, according tp the report.
