SALT LAKE CITY — Katy Perry and her collaborators have been ordered by a Los Angeles judge to pay $2.78 million in damages for copying a Christian rap song, according to the Associated Press.
Last week, a jury ruled that Perry and her team copied instrumental sounds for the 2013 song “Dark Horse” from a Christian rap song, which I wrote about for the Deseret News.
Perry will now have to hand over $550,000 of her own money. Capitol Records will pay the majority of the damages to Marcus Gray and his co-writers, who wrote the Christian rap song “Joyful Noise.”
The decision comes after almost five years of deliberation. Gray’s team said “Dark Horse” used instrumental sounds that were eerily similar to “Joyful Noise.” Perry’s team responded by saying that the beats and instrumentals used are common in most music, according to Fox News.
Gray’s attorneys argued that Perry’s team made tens of millions of dollars off the song. However, Perry’s team said much of the money was used for marketing and promotion.
But Perry’s song had a big cultural impact. It topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart for four weeks back in 2014, according to Entertainment Weekly. Perry also received a Grammy nomination for the song.