Pop icon Miley Cyrus has settled on a $430 million ($300 million USD) copyright lawsuit for an infringement in her 2013 track We Can’t Stop.
Miley was sued by Jamaican songwriter Flourgon (real name Michael May) in March 2018 when he claimed that We Can’t Stop misappropriated his 1988 song We Run Things.
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According to May, We Run Things is a reggae favourite in his home country of Jamaica. It reached No. 1 on the Jamaican charts at the time of release.
We Cant Stop was a hit single off Miley’s 2013 album Bangerz. At its peak, it hit No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in August of 2013.
Basically, Cyrus was accused of copying the line “We run things. Things don’t run we,” from May’s song, which includes the line “We run things. Things no run we.”
The lawsuit claimed that Miley’s track We Can’t Stop would not have received the same commercial success without the lyrical content allegedly stolen from Michael May, according to Forbes.
Sony Corp (the parent company of Miley’s record label RCA Records), Cyrus, May and other defendants ended the lawsuit with prejudice on Friday during a federal court hearing in Manhattan, 9 Honey reports.
A joint stipulation was filed with prejudice, which essentially means no further lawsuits can be filed in regards to the copyright infringement.
According to a letter from Miley’s lawyers on December 12, the settlement agreement has been signed and a stipulation will be filed “pending payment of the settlement proceeds.”
