Shenseea Denies Ripping Off Stephanie Sarley’s Fruit Clips In ‘Foreplay’ Copyright Lawsuit
Shenseea and her label Interscope Records have denied ripping off any intellectual property of US-based artist Stephanie Sarley in the music video for the Jamaican singer’s 2019 song, Foreplay.
Sarley had filed the lawsuit in the US District Court for the Central District of California on October 21, 2022.
In the complaint, she accused Shenseea and Interscope, a subsidiary of UMG Recordings Inc, of utilizing “nearly forty seconds of footage” from her “unique line of sensual fruit imagery,” which were “sometimes altered slightly in tone or hue” in the music video.
Sarley, who is being represented by California-based Pietz & Shahriari, LLP, is seeking “an award of damages, including actual damages and the disgorgement of any and all gains, profits and advantages obtained by Defendants” or, alternatively, “for an award of statutory damages in an amount of up to $150,000” for each of her three “Original Works” that were allegedly used without permission.
However, Shenseea’s lawyers, Ballard Spahr LLP, fired back on Friday (February 3) and have denied the allegations, according to court records obtained by DancehallMag.
In their response to the suit, Shenseea and Interscope claimed, among other things, that they “neither copied, nor directed or consorted with others to copy, any protectable elements of Plaintiff’s allegedly infringed works, and thus has not infringed any rights therein”.
Shenseea and Interscope also noted that if any infringement of Sarley’s material occurred, they do not accept responsibility because “persons or entities other than Defendant, over whom Defendant has no authority or control, were at fault.”
The Foreplay video was first released in October 2019, after Shenseea signed with Interscope Records and Rvssian‘s Rich Immigrants in May of that year.
The track was produced by Rvssian, while the credits for the allegedly infringing music video were attributed to RD Studios and Romeich Entertainment, which is headed by Shenseea’s co-manager Romeich Major.
The music video was subsequently removed from YouTube after Sarley called out Shenseea’s alleged infringement on Instagram and threatened legal action.
In early December 2019, she released an edited version of the Foreplay video, devoid of Sarley’s fruit clips.
Sarley’s complaint had included a collection of side-by-side comparisons of screenshots from the original Foreplay video and images of her “Original Works” in two exhibits.
In June 2019, singer Miley Cyrus was accused of plagiarizing Sarley’s work in promotional videos for an album, according to Vice.
Shenseea is also facing another lawsuit over Lick, which appeared on her debut album Alpha.
That suit, filed by NY-based producer Anastas ‘Pupa Nas-T’ Hackett in March last year, alleged that the song, which featured rapper Megan Thee Stallion, had used elements of Denise Belfon’s Soca song Work without the producer’s consent.