A copyright lawsuit over remixes of Dua Lipa’s 2020 hit Levitating has been dismissed by a federal court in Los Angeles, United States, more than three years after talkbox artist Bosko Kante filed it.
All parties signed a joint filing to end the case. The filing does not say whether they reached a settlement.
Parties end case with joint filing#
Kante, Lipa, Levitating co-writer and producer Stephen Kozmeniuk, and Warner Records agreed to end the case in a joint filing lodged on Monday, November 9. Lawyers for both sides signed it in late October.
The filing states: “The entire action is hereby dismissed with prejudice,” meaning Kante cannot bring the same claims again. Under its terms, Kante and the defendants will each pay their own costs and legal fees.
The two-page filing discloses no financial terms.
Claims over three remixes#
Kante sued in July 2023. He claimed that a talkbox performance he recorded for Levitating had been used without his permission on three remixes of the track.
Kante is a co-founder of ElectroSpit, which makes a wearable talkbox. The device lets a performer shape the sound of a synthesizer or other instrument with their mouth.
The remixes cited in the complaint were:
- The Blessed Madonna’s version featuring Madonna and Missy Elliott
- The version featuring DaBaby
- A remix created for the American Music Awards
The original complaint named Warner Music Group as a defendant. Later versions named Warner Records, the label of Warner Music Group (WMG) that released Levitating.
The original complaint sought at least USD $2 million in damages, plus the profits made from the remixes, which it estimated at more than $20 million. It also asked the court to rule that Kante owned or co-owned the copyright in all three remixes, and to bar the defendants from exploiting them any further.
Alleged oral deal and sampling claims#
According to the complaint, Kozmeniuk approached Kante in or around 2019 about recording a talkbox part for Levitating. The complaint states that “no written agreement, including any sort of ‘work for hire’ was ever executed.”
Instead, the complaint alleges, Kante and the defendants struck an oral deal. Under that deal, the defendants “were to pay Plaintiff the sum of $1,500, plus a share of neighboring rights to the track based on a split between 7 musicians (including Plaintiff), as well [as] provide a credit to Plaintiff for his work on the track. Additionally, and most importantly, it was explicitly agreed that there would be no reuse or sampling of Plaintiff’s Work beyond the use for the original version of the track, Levitating.”
The complaint also alleges: “All three remixes sampled and incorporated a greater amount of Plaintiff’s Work than that used in the original version, including, but not limited to, additional lyrics and melody that were created by Plaintiff, which do not appear in the original version.”
The complaint singled out one version, stating that “it was the DaBaby Remix that was the most successful version of Levitating.” Figures cited in the reporting on the case show:
- DaBaby remix: 2.145 billion streams on Spotify as of September 2024
- Album version: 984 million streams on Spotify as of September 2024
Levitating spent 77 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart between 2020 and 2022.
The July 2023 complaint also states: “Plaintiff made numerous attempts to resolve this matter short of litigation, but such efforts were unsuccessful, due to Defendants’ unwillingness to cooperate or accept responsibility for this blatant infringement of Plaintiff’s copyrights.”
Court rulings before dismissal#
In 2024, Lipa and her co-defendants asked the court to throw out the copyright claim. They argued that Kante had failed to pin down which parts of his recording appeared in the remixes.
Judge Hernán D. Vera rejected that argument in September 2024. He did grant the defendants’ separate request to dismiss a claim seeking an accounting of Warner’s earnings from the remixes, finding it preempted by federal copyright law.
“There is no requirement that Plaintiff be made to identify, second-by-second, which portions were used,” Judge Vera wrote in his ruling. He also noted that, at a court hearing, “Defendants’ counsel conceded that at least some portion of the Kante Recording was used.”
With the case now dismissed, no court or jury will decide whether Kante’s alleged oral deal for the original recording also covered its remixes. The case had been due to go to trial in March 2027.
Two earlier cases over Levitating#
Kante’s lawsuit followed two earlier copyright cases over Levitating, both filed in 2022.
In June 2023, a federal judge in California dismissed a suit from reggae band Artikal Sound System. The band had alleged that Levitating infringed its 2017 track Live Your Life. Judge Sunshine S. Sykes found that the band had failed to adequately allege that the creators of Levitating had ever had a chance to hear its song. The judge gave the band until June 16 to amend its complaint. Two days after her ruling, however, the band agreed with the defendants to dismiss the case with prejudice.
In March 2025, a federal judge in New York granted summary judgment in Lipa’s favor in a case brought by the publishing companies of songwriters L. Russell Brown and Sandy Linzer. The suit claimed that Levitating copied Wiggle and Giggle All Night, a 1979 disco song the pair wrote, and Don Diablo, a 1980 song to which they had acquired the rights. Judge Katherine Polk Failla found that the musical elements the songs shared were not protected by copyright.
Kante was himself named as a defendant in the original complaints in both 2022 cases. The Brown and Linzer complaint said he claimed “copyright and authorship credit” for Levitating.
