Jay Z’s "Run This Town" Copyright Infringement Lawsuit Thrown Out

Last year, Jay Z was sued over his 2009 single “Run This Town”, which featured Rihanna and Kanye West and appeared on his album The Blueprint 3. TufAmerica Inc. filed the lawsuit, claiming that an uncleared sample of Eddie Bo’s 1969 song “Hook & Sling” appeared on the track dozens of times. Today, the copyright infringement lawsuit was thrown out, Billboard reports.

The sample in question was a single syllable—”oh”—which is repeated throughout the song. New York federal judge Lewis Caplan wrote:

“The word ‘oh’ is a single and commonplace word. Standing alone, it likely is not deserving of copyright protection… As this motion may be resolved on other grounds, however, the Court need not decide whether the word ‘oh,’ as it appears in the Composition, is protectible. Were the Court to find ‘oh’ quantitatively significant to ‘Hook & Sling Part I’ or to Eddie Bo’s performance thereof, it in effect would read the quantitative significance element out of the substantial similarity test. This the Court will not do.”

TufAmerica also sued Kanye West for sampling “Hook & Sling” on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.

Watch the video for “Run This Town” and listen to “Hook & Sling”:

Comments are closed.