Judge: Lady Gaga Did Not Rip Off Chicago Songwriter

By Chuck Sudo in News on Jun 18, 2014 3:20PM

A federal judge ruled that Lady Gaga did not rip off liberal portions of her song “Judas” from a Chicago musician. Rebecca Francescatti, aka Rebecca F, filed the lawsuit in 2011, claiming Gaga’s hit bore a striking resemblance to Francescatti’s song “Juda.”

Francescatti named Gaga, her record label Interscope Records, Universal Music Group, DJ White Shadow and sound engineer Brian Joseph Gaynor as defendants in the suit. Gaynor, who worked with both Gaga and Francescatti, allegedly told Francescatti he was working with Gaga on several songs for her record “Born This Way.” Lady Gaga was deposed in the case and recorded four hours of testimony while in town during the 2012 Pitchfork Music Festival. Over 20 gigabytes of recorded material for the “Born This Way” recording sessions were also submitted as evidence.

Ultimately U.S. District Judge Marvin Aspen ruled “simply listening to the songs, as the law requires, reveals their utter lack of similarity.”

“The differences so outweigh the purported similarities between the melodies that they cannot be said to be even remotely similar,” Aspen wrote. “We agree with Defendants that the songs do not have common lyrics, the themes are different, and they do not sound at all alike musically.”

“Thus, we find the similarity of expression to be, quite clearly, ‘totally lacking.’ The (two songs) are so utterly dissimilar that reasonable minds could not differ as to a lack of substantial similarity between them.”