A court in South Dakota dismissed a copyright case over Katy Perry’s “Hot N Cold” this week. A court in California dismissed one over Flo Milli’s “Never Lose Me” days earlier. Put side by side, the two rulings look like the same event repeating itself: a judge dismisses a copyright suit, a label avoids a trial, a headline runs. They are not the same event. Neither judge looked at whether the songs in question actually share anything. One case ended because the parties settled. The other ended because the person suing never had the paperwork to be in court at all.
That distinction is the part the news cycle skips, and it is the part that matters to anyone who licenses, samples or buys a beat for money: a dismissed copyright case tells you almost nothing about whether copying happened, and a great deal about whether the plaintiff’s contract was signed.
What it means when a court dismisses a copyright case#
A copyright claim can end before trial for several distinct reasons, and only one of them involves a judge or jury comparing two pieces of music.
- Settlement. The parties agree privately, usually with terms that are never filed, and ask the court to enter a “stipulation of dismissal.” A dismissal “with prejudice” at this stage means the case cannot be refiled, nothing more. It carries no finding about who copied whom, because no one asked the judge to decide that.
- Standing. Before a court will even weigh similarity, it checks whether the plaintiff has the legal right to sue in the first place. Under US copyright law, only the owner of a right, or someone holding a validly transferred exclusive license to that right, can bring an infringement claim. A case can be thrown out at this stage without a single note of music being compared.
- Substantial similarity as a matter of law. Less commonly, a court can rule at an early stage that no reasonable listener could find the two works similar enough to infringe, usually reserved for cases where the shared material is a basic musical building block rather than an original expression. This is the one category that does involve comparing the songs, and it is the rarest of the three.
Both of this week’s cases fell into the first two categories. Neither reached the third.
Flo Milli: dismissed on paperwork, not on the music#
Baltimore-based artist Shamar Deal sued Flo Milli, Babyface Ray, 42 Dugg, producer Gerreaux Katana, Sony Music Entertainment and EMPIRE over a beat he said he bought exclusive rights to on the marketplace Traktrain in 2019 for $200. Flo Milli’s “Never Lose Me” sampled a track that Deal said used the same beat. Judge André Birotte Jr. dismissed the case with prejudice in November 2026, and the order turned entirely on one question: did Deal actually hold a valid exclusive license.
He did not, the judge found, because the producer never signed anything transferring the rights. Deal had a payment receipt, an email exchange, and a platform confirmation that read “you have purchased the exclusive rights.” None of that satisfied the rule Birotte quoted from a 1990 Ninth Circuit decision, Effects Associates, Inc. v. Cohen, 908 F.2d 555: “If the copyright holder agrees to transfer ownership to another party, that party must get the copyright holder to sign a piece of paper saying so.” The statutory source is 17 U.S.C. § 204(a), which requires any transfer of copyright ownership, including an exclusive license, to be in writing and signed by the person giving up the rights.
The judge never decided whether “Never Lose Me” and the beat Deal claims to have bought share protected material. He did not need to. Without a signed transfer, Deal was not the kind of party the law allows to raise that question in federal court. One report on the ruling noted explicitly that the dismissal should not be read as a finding that the two tracks contain no shared material at all, only that the plaintiff was not entitled to ask a court to decide that.
Katy Perry: dismissed by agreement, with a loose thread still hanging#
The “Hot N Cold” case followed a different path. It involved a claim against a South Dakota broadcaster over unauthorized public performance of the song, and the parties told the court in October they had entered settlement talks. On November 9, they filed a stipulation for dismissal with prejudice, and Judge Roberto A. Lange signed off. That is a procedural event, not an adjudication. No one asked Lange to rule on infringement, and he did not.
In the same order, Lange denied a motion by songwriter Jonna Johnson to intervene. Johnson claims producer Dr. Luke misappropriated songwriting credit on “Hot N Cold” and other tracks on Katy Perry’s 2008 album One of the Boys. The judge’s denial rested on jurisdiction, not on the substance of her claim, and he was explicit that the dismissal of the broadcaster case has no bearing on her authorship dispute, which she remains free to pursue separately. A case can close completely and leave the actual ownership question it brushed up against entirely open.
Why the difference matters more than the outcome#
Both headlines used the same verb. Neither case supports the inference a casual reader draws from it, that a court looked at the music and found no infringement. One case never got that far because of a contract defect. The other never got that far because the parties chose not to litigate it. A reader who treats “dismissed” as a verdict on the merits in either instance would be wrong twice, for opposite reasons.
That matters for how African music businesses read US litigation coverage involving beats and samples that eventually move through the same distribution pipes as Afrobeats, amapiano and Alté releases. It also matters directly for producers and labels on this side of the business, because the Traktrain scenario in the Flo Milli case is not a uniquely American problem.
What this means for artists and producers#
Beat marketplaces, Instagram DMs and WhatsApp-negotiated exclusives are routine ways African producers sell instrumentals, and the Flo Milli dismissal is a direct warning about what that paperwork needs to survive a dispute, whether the dispute happens in a Nigerian court, a South African one, or a US court because the record ultimately streamed there.
- A receipt is not a license. Proof of payment shows money changed hands. It does not show the producer agreed to give up ownership or exclusive rights, which is a separate legal fact that needs its own signed record.
- “Exclusive” has to be in writing and signed by the rights owner. Not the marketplace operator, not a manager, not whoever answers the WhatsApp message, the person who actually owns the beat.
- A platform confirmation message is not a substitute. Automated text reading “you have purchased the exclusive rights” is the platform describing the transaction, not the rights owner executing a transfer.
- Know whether your deal is exclusive or non-exclusive before you need to enforce it. Under US law, and as a matter of general contract practice elsewhere, only an owner or a valid exclusive licensee can sue over the right in question. A non-exclusive license holder generally cannot, no matter how clearly a track copied their beat.
- “The other side’s case got dismissed” is not proof your sample is clean. It may mean they settled, or that they lacked standing, which says nothing about whether your own use would survive a properly brought claim from someone who does hold the paperwork.
The practical fix costs nothing more than a short, signed document stating who owns what, exclusive or not, and for how long. Deal says he intends to appeal the Ninth Circuit’s ruling in his case. Whatever happens on appeal, it will turn on the same signed-paper question Judge Birotte already answered, not on how “Never Lose Me” and the track beneath it actually sound.
